The Bank of Korea Analyzes North Korean Economic Journals Using AI: "Kim Jong-un Promotes Reform and Opening"

BOK Economic Research
Analysis of North Korea's Economic Policy Changes through 'Economic Research'
Text Mining Approach

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Eun-byeol] The Bank of Korea, using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyze North Korean documents, found that while North Korea externally promotes a policy of closure and isolationism, internally it is pursuing plans for reform and opening up.

On the 18th, Kim Soo-hyun, head of the Forecasting Model Team at the Macroeconomic Model Department of the Bank of Korea's Research Bureau, stated, "After analyzing the titles of a total of 2,757 papers published in the North Korean academic journal 'Economic Research,' the paper titles clustered according to similarity, corresponding closely to the periods of rule under different leaders."

'Economic Research' was launched in 1956 and is published quarterly; it is a periodical that is available domestically. It can be seen as a concrete roadmap presented by economic experts in various fields under the guidelines of North Korea's supreme leader. Given the nature of North Korean society, analyzing these papers is considered a way to glimpse the supreme leader's economic thoughts, which is why the analysis was conducted.

The AI broadly classified the 'Economic Research' papers published so far into three categories: the Kim Il-sung period (1988?1994), the early Kim Jong-il period (1995?1998), and the Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un periods. The similarity of paper titles was notably high according to each supreme leader's era.

During the Kim Il-sung period, topics such as agriculture and criticism of the capitalist system were frequently extracted, while during the Kim Jong-il period, themes like criticism of capitalism, colonial invasion, and increasing productive forces were mainly highlighted.

In contrast, papers published during Chairman Kim Jong-un's period covered a wide and diverse range of topics, including overseas banking systems, currency circulation and exchange rates, trade theory, and competitiveness in the era of globalization. The representative topics extracted by AI for Kim Jong-un's period include ▲overseas banking systems and foreign credit strategies ▲recent financial markets and capital flows ▲currency circulation and exchange rates ▲competitiveness in the era of globalization ▲methods of operating overseas banking systems.

Kim said, "This suggests that theoretical and empirical foundational research for reform and opening up is being conducted in North Korea."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.