North Korea earned as much as $22bn in foreign currency between 2022 and 2025, nearly four times the total for the previous four-year period, according to a Bloomberg Economics analysis of trade data and intelligence published August 7.

The windfall has coincided with a third straight year of North Korean GDP growth, at 3.5% in 2025, trade with China at its highest level since sanctions were imposed, a residential construction boom in Pyongyang and the rollout of mobile food-delivery and ride-hailing apps for residents.

"Pyongyang has proven its ability to adapt to sanctions, and as international norms and law erode, it has found allies in its resistance," Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, was quoted as saying.

From smuggling to statecraft

The regime has moved well beyond the small-scale sanctions evasion of the past - currency forgery, tobacco and coal smuggling - into far more lucrative channels. Cyber theft is now central to the model: hacking groups linked to Pyongyang account for more than 70% of all cryptocurrency stolen worldwide, according to blockchain-analytics firm TRM Labs, with the proceeds laundered through Chinese organised-crime networks. Separate reporting has put North Korea's cyber-operations earnings at upwards of $1bn a year.

Arms sales to Russia, and the technology transfers that have accompanied them, have allowed North Korea to accelerate its own weapons development. Kim has ordered the construction of two 5,000-tonne destroyers a year for the next five years - the largest warships in the country's history - and Pyongyang is reported to have folded some of that naval expertise back from Russian know-how shared in return for North Korean troops and munitions sent to support Moscow's war in Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal reported in late July that Kim plans to further strengthen North Korea's military intelligence apparatus and expand its foreign intelligence operations. Former North Korean officials say sanctions cutting the country off from the international banking system have pushed its intelligence services to fund themselves largely through cryptocurrency theft.

Diplomatic isolation eases

The financial windfall has been matched by a gradual thaw in North Korea's diplomatic isolation. As IntelliNews reported, North Korea has been welcomed into the steadily expanding CRINK alliance and China, Russia, and Iran, which are increasing expanding and deepening economic, military and cultural ties as a sort of anti-liberal alliance to oppose the Western hegemony.

All three of the Asian states are now openly supporting Iran in its existential fight with the US. For years, isolated from the rest of the world, Pyongyang is isolated no more.

Delegations from Singapore, Indonesia, Belarus and Vietnam have visited Pyongyang over the past year. In March, Kim hosted Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the first official visit by a Belarusian head of state to North Korea; in July, Russian President Vladimir Putin received North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui in the Kremlin and thanked Pyongyang for its help in retaking Russia's Kursk region.