An under-the-radar move by North Korea to limit the rights of foreign-invested businesses and banks reflects the state’s efforts to reassert greater control over all aspects of the economy, even as it pursues greater economic cooperation with Russia.

The DPRK quietly revised the text of its Law on Foreign Investment in March 2022, but the change only became known in June when North Korea’s Foreign Trade magazine published the latest version of the law.

The new law targeted foreign-invested and wholly foreign-owned banks operating in North Korea, prohibiting them from conducting joint operations with