One of North Korea’s major structural issues is its banking and financial system. Still officially committed to state socialism, finance has long been neglected within an institutional framework that prioritizes material over monetary flows, and gross supply over fiscal transfers. 

However, North Korea is an increasingly marketized economy, and the Central Bank’s role in the economy increasingly reflects these new institutional realities, as official sources demonstrate.

This article is based on a North Korean book published on the Central Bank’s role in North Korean banking that was released back in March of