North Korea tried to buy luxury cars ahead of food crisis last year: Report | NK News
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September 28, 2026Sep 28, 2026

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North Korea tried to buy luxury cars ahead of food crisis last year: Report

New UN draft report documents effort to procure four top-of-the-line SUVs last year despite strict COVID border controls

North Korea tried to buy four luxury SUVs worth $600,000 ahead of a nationwide “food crisis” last year, information in a forthcoming U.N. Panel of Experts draft report shows.

The DPRK’s General Administration of Civil Aviation attempted to purchase the four luxury-class Toyota SUVs in April 2021 from a Chinese firm called Shenyang Power Company Ltd., the draft report states, citing a U.N. member state.

“This kind of luxury SUV in North Korea is used for the personal transport of top echelons of the leadership,” Go Myong-Hyun of the Asan Institute in Seoul told NK News. 

North Korea has