制裁为何挡不住朝鲜：黑客、中俄输血与22亿美元收入

North Korea. It's a bit of an enigma. A sealed off society on the doorstep of a global superpower. A minuscule economy, but a nuclear arsenal that commands global attention. And despite a mountain of international sanctions designed to crush it, the Kim regime has begun to thrive. The entire North Korean government is in stronger position than at any point over last 35 years. Following a brief surge in 2016, crippling UN sanctions and pandemic lockdowns sent the economy into a prolonged slump.

But by 2023, something changed and the regime oversaw rapid GDP growth. North Korea's trade and overall regime revenue sources have shifted significantly. A rich North Korea has the potential to be a much larger threat. If the world once viewed Kim Jong-un as the lonely dictator of a hermit kingdom, his recent schedule tells a very different story. This is an amazing comeback story for leader Kim Jong-un. We are seeing him more powerful economically, militarily, politically than ever before.

His newfound cash is funding a massive military buildup and become dynasty for another generation, potentially in the hands of his young daughter. So how did one of the most isolated, heavily sanctioned regimes on earth pull off a multi-billion dollar economic turnaround? It's quite easy to spot a lottery winner. That neighbor who used to take a bus to work now has a brand new Mercedes, and they've outsourced the steering.

North Korea's capital city of Pyongyang has been looking suspiciously flush of late too. There are more cars. There are more people who use smartphones. The ability to call an Uber-like car. These huge leaps that seem to point to a more prosperous North Korea. At night, North Korea is the dark patch between two economic powerhouses, China and South Korea. But over recent years, someone appears to have found the dimmer switch and been turning it up.

There has been a noticeable improvement in Pyongyang and some other major cities. Starting in 2022 to now, we've seen a huge influx of revenue to the regime. Almost 60% increase in the foreign currency that the regime has access to in the highest years post-pandemic compared to their pre-sanctioned levels that significantly changed the economic prospects. Between 2022 and 2025, North Korea has raked in billions of dollars in foreign earnings, totaling as much as $22 billion according to a Bloomberg economics analysis.

That's nearly four times more than the previous four-year period. Although let's be clear on something. We are still talking about a country that's one of the most impoverished in the world. Estimates from the Bank of Korea put its economy currently or GDP at around $30 billion. And that is 60 times smaller than its southern neighbor South Korea, which sits at around $1.9 trillion in GDP. The past decade has actually been a really pivotal moment for North Korea, not only its economy, but its entire political system.

A turning point was 2019 and a high profile summit in Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, arriving in Hanoi. They were discussing exchanging sanctions relief with dismantling Kim's nuclear program. But talks collapsed. Kim left humiliated and broke. Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that. His economy suddenly hit the wall because of the sanctions.

And so Kim doubled down on his sole explosive leverage. North Korea is actually accelerating its production of nuclear weapons and potentially is on track to have one of the biggest stockpiles out there. Fast-forward a few years, things look a bit different economically and politically. Chinese President Xi Jinping has appeared alongside Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-un at a military parade marking 80 years since the end of World War II.

I don't think it's something that we would've imagined when the talks collapsed in Hanoi. Not least because China was also growing wary of Kim's nuclear tests. That is all signs of Kim very strategically navigating the geopolitical landscape. So what happened in those intervening years? How was Kim able to find both power and relative wealth despite the weight of sanctions and isolation? First, according to the United Nations and private researchers, stealing internet money.

North Korea has put forward the largest state sponsored hacking units with a specific focus on crypto sources. That has reached astronomical levels with estimates in 2025 putting their thefts into upwards of two billion a year. Private research has said that in 2017, North Korean hacking groups accounted for about 30% of global thefts of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. Barring a bit of downtime during the pandemic, it's now thought to be in excess of 70%.

And eventually they cash it out into euros, dollars, Renminbi, and then that money can be moved to bank accounts primarily outside of North Korea to purchase goods for the regime. Then there's China. China is still the most important backer for North Korea economy. It's where 98% of North Korea's trade comes from. China remains the number one destination for North Korean exports and the number one source for North Korean imports, and is incredibly important for the supply of critical energy resources for the North Korean economy as well.

Beijing supports its neighbor to the extent sanctions allow, partly because it wants to avoid North Korea's economic collapse and the refugee crisis and regional instability that may follow. China is sometimes willing to tolerate actions of North Korea, which are not actually popular in Beijing. They need a stable North Korea and they're willing to pay for it. But by far, the biggest source of new money for the Kim regime came from this.

Russia launches an attack on Ukraine. The Ukrainian government calls it a full-scale invasion. The emergence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Russia's need for North Korean arms completely changed the picture. Russia has been using munitions at a much faster pace than they initially anticipated and needed to find another source of Soviet era artillery. North Korea is a rare place that had a huge amount in storage and also had the ability to produce it.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates North Korea has earned as much as $12.8 billion from this arms deal alone. It remains unclear how much of that is coming back just in cash or whether it is coming back in goods and technology. One example would be that the North Koreans have recently unveiled a new destroyer. And that destroyer is using, it appears, Russian technology, particularly for its air defense.

That air defense equipment likely would've cost upwards of $20 million. And in this case, it looks to have been transferred from Russia to North Korea. This has changed the regime's ability to ramp up its own economic and defensive plans. Particularly as it seeks to build out its conventional military, which is languished as it's invested the majority of its money in its nuclear corporate. The war in Ukraine may also have helped manufacturers test and improve weaponry based on real combat experience.

So even if they started off sending something not as sophisticated, we do believe that they've achieved a level of upgrade of these weapons. Meaning that if it wants to, he can sell these weapons elsewhere in other countries. Kim Jong Un appears to be aware that the war could end at some point. And that is in part why we think that he's trying to restore this relationship with Xi Jinping. We just saw Xi Jinping visit Pyongyang in June, first visit in seven years.

With China behind their backs with their pockets full of money, I think the government can feel quite secure, confident. And I think indeed they will probably stay in power for many years to come. More on this in a moment. I feel like a pawn and a big game of chess. Uncover more at bloomberg.com/videos. This influx of capital demonstrates Kim Jong-un's adaptabi

原文超出正文长度上限，此处截断——上游还有内容，完整版见上方「原文 ↗」。