"North Korea sits on more than half of the world's deposit [of graphite]" was quite rich! lol"
Yes, like China, one has to take these reports with a grain of salt.
The following was an extract taken from U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY MINERALS YEARBOOK—2013. Perhaps they added the Yeongchon Mine production capacity and the anthracite coal, lol.
Graphite.—According to the Industrial Minerals (IM) Data Group, North Korea has been widely reported to be among the world’s top five producers of flake graphite, with output of about 30,000 metric tons per year (t/yr) in 2011.The IM Data group, however, reported that annual production might actually be less than 10,000 t/yr.
The Yeongchon Mine was the country’s only graphite mine. The operation historically had a production capacity of about 75,000 t/yr, but lack of fuel, water, and processing equipment had resulted in decreased output. The IM Data Group also reported that errors in trade statistics may have been made when anthracite coal was incorrectly categorized as natural graphite because a significant portion of the amount reported as flake graphite was actually amorphous graphite (a lower purity and lower cost commodity) (table 2; Moores, 2013).
