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Significance
Pyongyang does not publish figures, but data and estimates produced in Seoul show that North Korea’s GDP shrank by 4.5% last year, its worst fall for 23 years, and trade hit a 30-year low. In June, supreme leader Kim Jong-un called the food situation “tense” and in August he dispatched troops to help deal with flooding.
Impacts
Small signs of fence-mending and lack of weapons tests may imply sufficient desperation for Kim to start, or feign, denuclearisation talks.
Kim's choice to halt to all foreign trade is an overreaction to COVID-19; a second wave in China will fuel this paranoia.
Kim's explicit rejection of foreign aid will be hard to reverse, but not impossible if he is desperate and a face-saving mechanism is found.
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2021
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