North Korean economist Ri Gi Song, a researcher at the Institute of Economics at the Academy of Social Sciences, said the coal ban would not have a big effect.
“We have been exporting some good quantities of coal, but we didn’t export very much,” he said. “(Therefore) we don’t feel very much affected by the so-called restrictions.”
He said the export of other raw materials — such as magnesite and graphite, used in smartphone production — is “very important” for major world economies. North Korea sits on more than half of the world’s deposit of those two raw materials, Ri said.
