North Korea’s grand plan to become the ‘next Singapore’ – if only the West would give them a chance

North Korea is exploring a grand plan to become a regional transportation hub, inspired in part by the successes of Singapore and Switzerland, and would be open to joining world financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund if current member states give up their “hostile” policies toward it, according to a senior government economist.

Ri Ki-song, a senior researcher with the Economic Institute of the North’s Academy of Social Sciences, said that although sanctions aimed at getting his country to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes have increased over the past year, the country’s economy has maintained steady growth – with its GDP increasing from US$24.998 billion in 2013 to US$29.595 billion in 2016 and US$30.704 billion in 2017.

Some outside experts dispute the North’s statistics. An estimate released in July by South Korea’s central bank, for example, had the North’s GDP decreasing 3.5 per cent in 2017, which would be its biggest contraction since the famine years of the late 1990s.

Ri, who spoke with The Associated Press in Pyongyang last week, said the growth reflected how sanctions have resulted in some parts of the economy becoming more efficient and self-reliant.

The North has developed a kind of fertiliser that uses domestically produced coal instead of imported oil products, and made improvements in the method of producing steel, he said. He did not mention the flowering of capitalist-style markets, which are still officially somewhat frowned upon but which many observers suspect is a major factor if the economy is indeed growing.

Ri expressed optimism about the current climate of detente on the Korean peninsula and leader Kim Jong-un’s summits this year with Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.

“We are seeing a lot of changes in the atmosphere surrounding our country,” he said.