North Korea’s exports to neighboring China fell to just a small fraction of their pre-sanctions equivalents in February, data from China’s General Administration of Customs shows.

Successive rounds of UN sanctions passed throughout 2016 and 2017 targeted many of the DPRK’s raw material and high earning exports, dropping the country’s trade revenue with China to just USD$8.8 million last month.

The total is around 5 percent of North Korea’s trade earnings during the same month in 2016: before the UN began calling on member states to implement broad sectoral sanctions against the DPRK.[/p