KB News Desk
North Korea earned a windfall from soaring tungsten prices, largely thanks to China’s tighter export controls on the mineral in the first half of this year, but the gains were too small to offset a sharp slide in its currency and rising inflation, a report showed.
Between January and May, North Korea’s exports to China rose to $287 million, up 68 percent on-year from about $171 million. Tungsten ore accounted for $88 million, or nearly one-third of the total, according to a report released last week by the US-based monitoring website 38 North.
According to the report, North Korea’s tungsten exports by value showed an almost 10-fold jump year-on-year. The mineral also overtook wigs and false hair to become the country’s largest export to China.
The increase, however, was driven mostly by higher prices rather than greater shipments.
Tungsten export volume rose only about 15 percent, while the average unit value surged from around $8 to nearly $70 per kilogram. The report estimated that higher prices accounted for about 98 percent of the increase in export earnings.
38 North attributed the price surge to China’s tightening of tungsten export controls.
China, which accounts for more than three-quarters of global supplies, introduced an export licensing system for tungsten products in February 2025 and tightened the controls further this year. North Korea was consequently able to earn substantially more while exporting roughly the same volume, the report said.
Yet the windfall was too small to significantly improve the country’s trade balance.
Additional earnings generated by the higher tungsten prices averaged about $16 million per month, far below North Korea’s average monthly imports from China of $194 million.
At the same time, the North Korean currency lost nearly half its value against the dollar during the period, with the dollar’s market exchange rate rising from around 37,250 North Korean won ($41.4) in January to about 70,800 won in May.
38 North pointed to an expansion of the domestic money supply as a possible cause of the currency’s decline, noting that Pyongyang has funded large construction and regional development projects while sharply raising state-sector wages since late 2023.
The tungsten boom was far too small to influence the foreign exchange market and “neither caused the won’s slide nor cushioned it,” the report said.
The resulting inflation did not affect all North Koreans equally.
“The burden fell on the won-dependent,” the report added, explaining that people earning or holding foreign currency largely maintained their purchasing power, while state enterprise workers and others paid in won suffered a sharp decline in real income.
