North Korea’s five major insurance companies released new financial data on their websites that shows they fared well in 2021 despite the harsh lockdown and trade restrictions that have continued since the beginning of the pandemic. Growth was slow but positive, and the insurers in the maritime sector specifically saw big jumps over 2020 when the pandemic first rocked the DPRK economy.

Pyongyang was slow to release insurance business data last year, and no insurance company but Polestar refused to give any predictions about the national economy in the near future. While the 2020 data showed that the smaller