The Black Hole of North Korea - By Marcus Noland | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/07/the_black_hole_of_north_korea
Marcus Noland tells of his own difficulties, and those of North Korean experts in general, when dealing with unreliable, misleading, or often just fraudulent DPRK economic data. How you study the numbers of a country who considers them a state secret? Noland guides us on who and what to trust when looking for this data.
The Black Hole of North Korea
What economists can’t tell you about the most isolated country on Earth.
BY MARCUS NOLAND | MARCH 7, 2012
The government of North Korea regards economic statistics as state secrets, which makes the country’s economy difficult to study. I do careful survey research on the North Korean economy by surveying defectors, Chinese enterprises, and South Korean firms. Still, North Korea is so opaque that when I am asked where I get my data, I normally reply, “I make it up.” And I’m only half-joking.
Others seem less than half-serious. Last month, the South Korean news agency Yonhap ran a story about a report from a major South Korean think tank stating that North Korea’s GDP grew 4.7 percent in 2011. That think tank, the Hyundai Research Institute, used a combination of United Nations infant mortality data for 198 countries over the 2000-2008 period and North Korean crop data to estimate annual North Korean per capita income. While infant mortality and food availability correlate with income, one cannot meaningfully estimate year-to-year income changes with these two pieces of information alone.