North Korea is one of the world’s poorest industrial economies. More than half of its population lives in cities and the country has large amounts of capital relative to the size of its economy, and yet roughly 60% of its population is thought to be food insecure or hungry.

Now, recent research from the Bank of Korea indicates that North Korea’s economic stagnation started earlier than previously thought. According to this research, North Korea has not only consistently lagged behind South Korea since the late 1950s, but its average rate of growth was around 1% between 1961 and