- North Korea is a secretive nation of 25 million people led by Kim Jong Un.
- Its isolationist policies have hurt the country's economy, but we don't know the depth of its struggles because North Korea doesn't release detailed data.
- Here are nine mind-blowing facts about North Korea's economy.
- Visit Markets Insider's homepage for more stories.
North Korea is one of the most secretive nations in the world.
The country of 25 million people has been ruled by the Kim dynasty for more than 70 years.
North Korea's economy has struggled because of its isolationist policies, yet the exact extremes of the country's hardships are unknown, as it doesn't release detailed data.
We do know it's a nation where the average worker takes home less than $2,000 a year, much of the population is undernourished, and citizens can pay upwards of $12,000 to defect.
Here are nine surprising facts about North Korea's economy:
More than 40% of North Koreans are undernourished.
The percentage of undernourished North Koreans increased to 43.4% in 2018 from 37.5% in 2000, according to the Global Hunger Index.
The percentage of undernourished children under the age of 5 has decreased in that time, however.
According to the index, North Korea is not the most undernourished nation in the world — it ranks 109th out of 199.
But the situation has been dire since a famine in the 1990s, during which up to 2 million people died.
Virtually nobody uses the internet in North Korea.
North Korea severely restricts internet access for its citizens.
There is one secure internet server in the country, but not even 1% of the population finds itself on the internet.
Instead, citizens are relegated to using a state-controlled, domestic intranet called Kwangmyong. The service is free (if you can afford a computer), but it allows access only to a select list of censored websites.
According to The Telegraph, the only North Koreans who can use the internet as we know it are political leaders and their families, students at elite universities, and people who work for the nation's cyberwarfare units.
Vox reported that Kwangmyong "runs rudimentary email and browser tools that are restricted to a hand-picked collection of 'sites' that have been copied over and censored from the real internet."
There could be trillions of dollars' worth of minerals underground in North Korea.
North Korea likely is sitting on a wealth of mineral deposits, with one estimate reaching more than $6 trillion and another nearly $10 trillion, according to Quartz.
The deposits could include more than 200 types of mineral, including iron, gold, zinc, copper, and graphite. Likewise, plenty of rare metals are used in smartphone production in China and South Korea.
The estimates of the mineral value come from South Korean companies, though Quartz said that North Korea runs its mines inefficiently and that private mining is illegal in the communist country.
Kim Jong Il spent $800,000 a year on Hennessy.
At one point, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was spending upwards of $800,000 a year on Hennessy, according to US News & World Report.
The cognac distiller even said that for two years in the mid-1990s, Kim was the largest buyer of Hennessy Paradis, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A bottle of Hennessy can cost $630 in North Korea — that isn't much less than the average North Korean's annual income, which is estimated to be between $1,000 and $2,000.
There are two economies in North Korea, and two prices for everything.
In the communist nation, there's the state-run economy and an underground one.
Because of this, there are two prices for everything, Bill Brown, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, told Marketplace last year. One state worker might get paid a fraction of another worker who is employed by a Chinese factory, he said.
A textile worker at a state-owned company in Pyongyang might make 3,000 North Korean won a month while another makes 100 times as much in a Chinese-affiliated factory, Brown said. He described it as "just a very destabilizing, inefficient system."
A $3.9 million hiking trail is at the heart of a Korean unification project.
In April, the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Council approved a $3.9 million budget to construct hiking trails in the demilitarized zone separating North Korea and South Korea.
The project — as well as the countries' recent removal of 11 guard posts in the area — stems from an agreement last year to start turning the DMZ into a peaceful zone, The Korea Times reported.
North Korean hackers have stolen $670 million worth of foreign and virtual currency.
While few citizens find their way onto the internet in North Korea, a panel commissioned by the UN Security Council found that North Korean hackers had stolen more than $670 million worth of foreign currency and cryptocurrency, according to Nikkei Asian Review.
The hackers' big hauls included $81 million from Bangladesh Bank, $13.5 million from Cosmos Bank in India, and $10 million from the Bank of Chile's ATM network, the panel found.
North Korea makes an estimated $50 million a year from illegal activities.
It's not just hacking — it was estimated in 2008 that the North Korean government made $50 million a year from illegal activities like drug sales and printing fake US currency.
North Korea denied it but did not provide official economic statistics, making it difficult to determine the truth. The UN has suggested the illegal funds help fund Kim Jong Un's lavish lifestyle.
It costs $12,000 to defect from North Korea.
Defecting from North Korea can cost a fortune, and it has become increasingly difficult to leave the country since Kim Jong Un took over in late 2011.
According to The Washington Post, a person would need to pay brokers about $12,000 to defect to South Korea. Other estimates have put the price tag as high as $16,000, up sharply from about $2,000 or $3,000 before 2012 and about $45 in the early 2000s, rights groups told Radio Free Asia.
Because many North Koreans make less than $2,000 a year, one of the few realistic ways they can afford to defect is if a family member has already done so and can pony up the fee.
While the most common method of defecting is crossing the river along North Korea's border with China, increased border security has made that harder and harder, The Post reported.
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