What makes North Korea live

North Korea is the most closed country in the world. It has been repeatedly targeted by international economic sanctions. Contrary to this, the state is active in international trade and has even established a kind of market economy. It is believed that North Korea generates significant revenues on the black market by supplying drugs, weapons, counterfeit money and stealing cryptovalous goods. To do this, the Kim Jong-un regime has a secret 'Office 39', a special structure that directly oversees illegal foreign trade.

The stereotype view of North Korea as a state where everyone lives, albeit stably, is far from the middle class of the hated capitalist countries, close to the truth. For some reason, the planned economy is not able to feed everyone with meat, remember the USSR. But North Korea is proud of its missiles and military power. The army needs something to support, so what does North Korea earn on?

This country's economy is divided into many levels, including the "black market" level, where transactions are conducted informally. The government does not provide any statistics on trade transactions carried out by local officials and politicians with higher ranks.

Most of the revenue generated by the country's treasury comes from trade relations with China, which is North Korea's main trading partner. North Korea's most profitable deals are arms and military transport.

Another way of earning money is sending thousands of North Korean workers abroad: to China, Russia and the Middle East, where they work in slave conditions in mining, logging, textile production and construction sites.

Another interesting income item for North Korea is the sale of weapons. In the early 1980s the country actively exported ballistic missiles and other weapons. However, in the 1990s, it pushed the sale of ballistic systems to the back burner, boosting trade in missile components.

As technology developed, North Korea acquired a whole staff of its own hackers, who helped the authorities raise money for the country.

Kim Jong-un decided to expand the hackers' activities and make their attacks more intense - he began providing incentives to programmers by increasing their salaries and distributing elite housing.

It is assumed that the cyberdivisions consist of 1,800 to 6,000 hackers. Hackers from North Korea are not sniffed out, and mining is cryptic. In early January 2018 it became known that they distribute malicious programs that capture other people's computers and force them to obtain cryptovalut.

North Korea earns up to $1 billion annually from illegal activities. Profits from counterfeiting 100-dollar banknotes and drug trafficking 'become the country's main source of currency.