North Korea’s Kim warns of ‘grave’ economic challenge

TIL Desk/World/Seoul/ North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has warned top ruling party officials of the “grave situation” facing the nuclear-armed state’s economy and called for urgent corrective measures. His comments, reported Monday by state media, came on the second day of a key party meeting held ahead of a year-end deadline for Washington to shift its stance on stalled nuclear talks with Pyongyang.

Kim, who chaired the meeting, said the time had come to bring about a “decisive turn” in the North’s economic development. He presented the assembled officials with “tasks for urgently correcting the grave situation of the major industrial sectors of the national economy,” .

The North does not publish economic statistics of its own, leaving outside estimates as the only available figures for its financial performance. In July, the South Korean central bank estimated that the North’s sanctions-hit economy had shrunk by 4.1 per cent in 2018 – the largest contractions since the devastating famine of the 1990s.