Korea's Economy
From the Issue
Korea's Economy Volume 23About Korea's Economy
Korea’s Economy is KEI’s annual journal publication dedicated to the key issues of the day for the Korean economy. Articles in Korea’s Economy are designed to give the casual, but informed reader insight into issues related to Korea’s markets and financial institutions, economic reform, economic relations with the wider world, and North Korea. It is published jointly each year with the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (henceforth North Korea) certainly seems to like being different from other countries. Whereas governments of virtually all the world’s countries regularly publish data on their international commercial and financial transactions, North Korea does not. Thus, any effort to compile data on the international transactions of this country is, by necessity, an educated guess. This article represents such a guess for 2005, the most recent year for which needed mirror data (see below) are available. What one quickly learns is that some of the needed guesses can be made with a high degree of certainty, whereas others are subject to so much uncertainty that one is not, at the end of the day, confident as to whether even the orders of magnitude are right.