North Korea

Overview

North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is an authoritarian single-party state occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. Ruled by Kim Jong Un since 2011, it is one of the world’s most isolated countries, maintaining a centrally planned economy, a vast standing army, and a growing nuclear arsenal under extensive international sanctions.

North Korea covers about 55 percent of the peninsula’s land area, bordered by China and Russia to the north and by South Korea to the south (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Its capital, Pyongyang, is a major industrial and transport center near the west coast, and the DMZ — 4 km wide, about 240 km long — was established by the 1953 armistice roughly along the 38th parallel (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The population is about 26.4 million, Korean is the official language, and there is no official religion (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The CIA classifies its government as a dictatorship and single-party communist state (The World Factbook). This profile covers its land, people, government, economy, and the sanctions regime around its nuclear program.

Land and people

Mountains and valleys characterize most of North Korea, and the Kaema Highlands form the peninsula’s topographic roof (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Mount Paektu, at 2,744–2,750 meters on the Chinese border, is the highest point — an extinct volcano topped by a large crater lake (Encyclopaedia Britannica; The World Factbook). The Yalu, the longest river, flows some 800 km southwestward to Korea Bay; the Tumen runs about 520 km northeastward to the East Sea (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The climate is cool continental, with most of roughly 1,000 mm of annual rain falling in the June–September monsoon (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

The population is racially homogeneous and about 63 percent urban, concentrated in the western lowlands — above all Pyongyang (about 3.16 million) — and around Hungnam and Wonsan in the east (The World Factbook). Only 19.1 percent of the land is arable, but North Korea holds coal, iron ore, limestone, magnesite, graphite, copper, zinc, lead, precious metals, and hydropower (The World Factbook).

Government and the Kim dynasty

Constitutionally, the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) rules and the 687-seat unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly is the highest state organ, but both operate under Kim Jong Un’s leadership, with power concentrated in the supreme leader (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The third ruler of the Kim dynasty, Kim Jong Un succeeded his father Kim Jong Il in December 2011, consolidating power through purges and expanding the nuclear and missile programs (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Founded in 1948 under Kim Il Sung, the DPRK cemented autocratic one-party rule after the northern half of Korea came under Soviet-sponsored communist control following World War II (The World Factbook). After failing to conquer the UN-backed South in the Korean War, it proclaimed juche (“self-reliance”) while still relying heavily on China and the Soviet Union, and demonized the United States as the central threat to its system (The World Factbook). In 2024 Pyongyang ended all economic cooperation with South Korea, scrapped a 2018 de-escalation pact, abandoned reunification, and named the South its “principal enemy” (The World Factbook).

Economy

North Korea is one of the last centrally planned economies, hard hit by COVID-19, crop failures, sanctions, and isolationist policies, with declining growth and heavy reliance on China (The World Factbook). Real GDP at purchasing power parity was an estimated $15.4 billion in 2023 — about $600 per person (The World Factbook). Industries — military products, machine building, electric power, chemicals, mining, metallurgy, textiles, food processing — have stagnated since the end of Soviet aid in 1991, with China taking roughly 74 percent of exports and 97 percent of imports (The World Factbook).

Stat plus implication: with per-capita GDP near $600 — among the world’s lowest — North Korea’s nuclear and missile buildup is inseparable from illicit revenue like cyber theft, which funds weapons development beyond the reach of sanctions (The World Factbook). It began tolerating semi-private markets in 2002, but after its 2020 COVID lockdown it reinvigorated state control of the economy (The World Factbook). There is no independent media — radios and televisions are pre-tuned to government stations — and only about 55 percent of the population has access to electricity (The World Factbook).

Sanctions, cyber theft, and the weapons economy

North Korea’s nuclear program is ringed by one of the most extensive sanctions regimes in history — a picture the standard country profiles do not assemble. The UN Security Council built it with Resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 and 2094 (2013), 2270 and 2321 (2016), and 2371, 2375, and 2397 (2017) — progressively banning heavy weapons, missile technology, luxury goods, aviation fuel, mineral, coal, iron, textile, and labor flows, and restricting oil (Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation). The United States layers on its own sanctions, enforced by the State and Treasury Departments under executive orders and the 2016 North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act (Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation).

That enforcement cracked in 2024: Russia vetoed renewal of the UN Panel of Experts tracking compliance, the panel ended 30 April, and the United States said it would seek enforcement mechanisms inside and outside the UN (Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation). The CIA World Factbook reports the regime increasingly relies on illicit activities — including cybercrime — to fund its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs and evade sanctions (The World Factbook). In February 2025 the FBI publicly attributed the theft of about $1.46 billion in cryptocurrency from the Bybit exchange — called the world’s largest crypto heist — to North Korean “TraderTraitor” actors, tracked as the Lazarus Group (also known as APT38 and BlueNoroff) (Infosecurity Magazine). The FBI warned the assets were being dispersed across thousands of addresses toward fiat conversion, and blockchain firm Elliptic independently attributed the theft to the Lazarus Group (Infosecurity Magazine).

Measure	Value	Source
Population (2025 est.)	26,402,841	CIA World Factbook
Area	120,538 sq km	CIA World Factbook
Land borders	China 1,352 km; South Korea 237 km; Russia 18 km	CIA World Factbook
Highest point	Paektu-san, 2,744 m	CIA World Factbook
Real GDP per capita (2023)	$600	CIA World Factbook
Active-duty military (2025)	Up to 1.3 million	CIA World Factbook
Military spending, 2010–2020	20–30% of GDP annually	CIA World Factbook
Nuclear tests acknowledged	6, since 2006	Encyclopaedia Britannica
UN sanctions resolutions	1718 through 2397	Center for Arms Control

Frequently asked questions

What is the capital of North Korea? Pyongyang is the national capital and largest city, a major industrial and transport center near the west coast, with about 3.16 million people in its municipal district. It is the seat of the regime’s government and home to the Korean Workers’ Party and the Supreme People’s Assembly.

Who is the leader of North Korea? Kim Jong Un has been the leader since 2011, succeeding his father Kim Jong Il. He is the third ruler of the Kim dynasty after his grandfather Kim Il Sung, is supreme leader and State Affairs Commission president, and has maintained absolute political control while expanding the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Does North Korea have nuclear weapons? Yes. North Korea has conducted six acknowledged nuclear tests since 2006 and has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles theoretically able to reach the continental United States. The regime views its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against foreign intervention and a regime-survival guarantee.

Why is North Korea under sanctions? The UN Security Council imposed sanctions starting with Resolution 1718 (2006) after North Korea’s first nuclear test, expanding them nine times through Resolution 2397 (2017) to cover arms, luxury goods, coal and iron exports, oil imports, and labor exports. The United States, European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Australia maintain their own sanctions aimed at halting its nuclear and missile programs.

How does North Korea fund its weapons programs? With a per-capita GDP of about $600 and heavy reliance on China, North Korea turns to illicit revenue. The CIA reports the regime increasingly uses cybercrime to fund its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, and in 2025 the FBI attributed the $1.46 billion Bybit cryptocurrency theft to North Korean Lazarus Group actors.

What this profile does not claim

• It reports the U.S. government’s Lazarus attribution as attribution; it does not assert the attribution’s truth itself.
• It gives no death toll for the 1990s famine; no source read here provided a verified figure.
• It does not detail nuclear weapon designs, yields, or delivery systems technically.
• It does not go beyond the CIA’s 10,000–12,000 estimate for the 2025 Russia deployment.
• It does not cover North Korea’s human-rights situation, which merits its own profile.
• It does not resolve the Factbook–Britannica area discrepancy (120,538 vs 123,214 sq km); both are estimates.