The present article examines North Korea’s Five-year Economic Strategy (2016-2020). Utilizing a large portion of the strategy document obtained by the authors, it considers the background to the strategy’s formation, providing new data about the state of the North Korean economy in the period prior. It also examines the actual goals of the strategy, assesses the rates of growth required to realize such targets given prior performance, and the concrete measures that the planning authorities offer to realize their objectives. We offer tentative evidence that the strategy’s taut goals that demanded massive rises in output created structural contradictions because of changes to the enterprise and farming management systems that were designed to loosen state control over industry.