Kim Jong Un currently has more money in North Korea’s coffers than at any other point during his 15 years in power.

The Pyongyang regime managed to accumulate as much as $22 billion in foreign revenue between 2022 and 2025, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Economics based on official trade data, intelligence information, and independent research into the country’s main sources of revenue.

That amount is nearly four times what had been accumulated during the previous four-year period, immediately after the United States succeeded in persuading China and Russia to agree to the imposition of UN sanctions aimed at depriving Kim of the foreign currency he needed to develop his nuclear program.

Despite the restrictions, however, the North Korean leader has managed to strengthen his country’s nuclear deterrent, deepen relations with key diplomatic partners, and expand its sources of revenue.

Kim’s economic “lottery”

And all this without the billions of dollars in foreign aid that had helped sustain the regimes of his father and grandfather, the only other leaders ever to rule North Korea.

Pyongyang has been transformed during this period, thanks to an extensive construction program. The capital’s once-empty streets have filled with Chinese-made private cars, while Kim is showcasing increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, including two modern warships.

“North Korea is in a stronger position than at any other time in the past 35 years,” Andrei Lankov, a Korean studies expert and director of the Korea Risk Group consultancy, told Bloomberg. Revenue from weapons sales to Russia was like “winning the lottery” for Kim, he said, while renewed support from Chinese President Xi Jinping amounts to a reliable “pension.”

North Korea does not publish its economic data. At the same time, Kim’s government and its partners take measures to conceal illicit trade transactions. Consequently, the revenue figures are estimates and may understate or overstate actual earnings.

Much of the money remains outside North Korea, as the country is cut off from the international banking system, while other payments are believed to be made in goods or through technology transfers.

In any case, the data portray a regime that has moved from smaller-scale methods of circumventing sanctions, such as counterfeiting currency and tobacco smuggling, to far more lucrative activities. The result is a wealthier North Korea that could potentially pose a much greater threat to the rest of the world.

From humiliation in Hanoi to Putin’s invasion

Kim’s economic recovery represents a striking reversal of the situation that had developed. Just seven years ago, the North Korean leader walked away from the much-discussed summit with Donald Trump in Hanoi without an agreement to ease the extensive UN sanctions.

The years that followed were even more difficult. A disastrous harvest triggered a food crisis inside the country, while the closure of the borders during the pandemic drastically curtailed trade with North Korea’s most important partner, China, deepening Kim’s diplomatic isolation.

In a 2020 speech, the North Korean leader appeared tearful and made a rare apology, acknowledging that he had failed to manage the economic difficulties better.

The turning point came in 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, offering Kim an unexpected lifeline.

As Moscow consumed enormous quantities of ammunition, it turned to Pyongyang for Soviet-style artillery shells. North Korea’s huge stockpiles suddenly acquired significant value, which Kim could convert into money, food aid, and advanced military technology.

Up to 50% of Russia’s critical ammunition

By the end of 2025, North Korea had supplied up to 50% of Russia’s needs for 122mm and 152mm ammunition, according to estimates by Ukrainian intelligence agencies.

Alongside ammunition, Kim also sent troops. According to estimates by South Korea and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, between 16,000 and 22,000 North Korean soldiers were deployed, in exchange for approximately $2,000 per month for each soldier.

Thousands of them were killed on the battlefield, including soldiers who, according to reports, took their own lives rather than be captured. North Korea is reportedly also receiving additional compensation for each death. “North Korean-Russian military cooperation is no longer merely a diplomatic or security issue,” South Korean opposition lawmaker Kang Dae-sik, a member of the parliamentary Defense Committee, said. “It has evolved into a major source of revenue supporting the North Korean economy,” he added.

Third consecutive year of growth

The Bank of Korea estimates that North Korea’s economy grew by 3.5% in 2025, marking a third consecutive year of growth. The performance was slightly weaker than in 2024, when the country recorded its strongest growth since sanctions were tightened.

China also appears to have taken the new reality into account, following years of cooler relations with Pyongyang because of its closer cooperation with Moscow.

At a military parade in Beijing last September, Kim stood alongside Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in a display of unity among nuclear powers. He was accompanied by his teenage daughter, Kim Ju Ae, reinforcing assessments that she is being groomed as his successor.

Smartphones, taxis, and Chinese cars in Pyongyang

The regime’s improved finances appear to be filtering, to some extent, into the daily lives of some residents of a country that remains among the poorest in the world.

Trade with China surged in June to its highest level since sanctions were imposed, with North Koreans importing $1.2 million worth of goods in sports equipment and recreational products alone.

Table-tennis balls, water skis, video games, treadmills, and other sporting goods entered the country, even though some of these items are considered luxury goods subject to UN restrictions.

Meanwhile, according to state media, new housing is being constructed every month across the country.

Residents of Pyongyang can now use digital apps — through the country’s tightly controlled domestic network — to buy food or hail taxis, according to Rowan Beard of Young Pioneer Tours, who has repeatedly visited the capital since 2012. “The increase in smartphone use is striking,” he said.

“It has never looked this strong”

North Korea “has never looked this strong,” estimates Joanna Hosaniak, deputy director-general of the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, who has studied the country for two decades.

One of the key indicators she cites is the unusually large number of vessels observed at Nampo port, the country’s most important maritime gateway. “Even in 2016, when North Korea recorded a record 22 million tons in coal exports, there weren’t as many ships as we see now,” she said.

The billions are going into the nuclear arsenal

Kim has channeled the influx of capital into the rapid development of the country’s nuclear arsenal, which, if it continues at its current pace, could bring North Korea to levels comparable to France’s nuclear stockpile within the next decade.

Pyongyang has consistently maintained that nuclear weapons serve as a shield against a potential U.S. attack, citing Iraq and Libya as examples to be avoided.

Traditionally, the emphasis on nuclear development meant that North Korea’s conventional forces remained technologically stuck in the Soviet era. That, however, now appears to be changing.

Over the past two years, the country has unveiled two 5,000-ton destroyers, the largest warships it has ever built, marking a technological leap that until a few years ago appeared difficult to achieve. At least one of them appears to be equipped with the Russian Pantsir-M air-defense system, worth approximately $20 million, which is considered more advanced than any short-range system known to be produced in North Korea.

Russian technology transfers have enabled Pyongyang to “compress the development timelines for its weapons systems,” according to a U.S. Forces Korea official.

Russia and North Korea, which share a land border just 17 kilometers long, are also cooperating on the production of attack UAVs, a development that could create “additional long-term security risks for the region,” according to Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sanctions commissioner.

North Korean ballistic missiles used on the battlefield “are not simply copies of the Russian Iskander system,” he added. “North Korea significantly improved the design and created its own variants with distinctive technical characteristics.” This development opens up another potential source of revenue for Kim: selling weapons to customers beyond Russia.

The “army” of hackers and cryptocurrency theft

North Korea’s economic recovery depends heavily on Russia’s willingness to continue the war, but this is not the only source of its growing revenues.

Over the past decade, Kim has built one of the world’s most prolific “armies” of cryptocurrency hackers, significantly diversifying the regime’s sources of financing.

Hacker groups linked to Pyongyang are now responsible for more than 70% of cryptocurrency theft worldwide, up from approximately 30% in 2017, according to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs.

The stolen funds are primarily laundered by Chinese organized-crime networks, which take a fee and, in return, provide access to offshore accounts denominated in yuan or dollars, according to Nick Carlsen, a senior researcher at TRM Labs. “It’s hard to believe that North Korea now has access to so much money,” he said.

No longer desperate for a deal with the U.S.

Kim also appears to be expanding his diplomatic network in order to reduce his dependence on Russia. Officials from Singapore, Indonesia, Belarus, and Vietnam visited Pyongyang over the past year.

The leader who was once portrayed in the West as the unpredictable dictator of an isolated state is now emerging as a resilient leader of a rising nuclear power.

North Korea no longer has an urgent need to negotiate with the United States or South Korea, particularly over its nuclear arsenal, according to Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and a North Korea expert. “Pyongyang has demonstrated its ability to adapt to persistent sanctions,” she noted. “And as international law and norms erode, it has found allies through this shared resistance.”