The international community has consistently imposed sanctions on North Korea. This study aims to discuss North Korea's responses to mitigate the impact of international economic sanctions on trade. Specifically, it focuses on how North Korea's diplomatic relations affect trade activities. This research centers on the period from 2012 to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing the interaction between North Korea's diplomatic relations and trade volume following the imposition of international sanctions. The study was conducted using regression analysis, Tobit analysis, and Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) analysis, and the results reveal that North Korea's diplomatic efforts through congratulatory diplomacy make a statistically significant contribution to expanding its trade volume. This supports the notion that strengthening diplomatic relations has been an effort to mitigate the economic impacts of sanctions on North Korea. These findings provide a new perspective on the responses of countries facing international economic sanctions and highlight the importance of diplomatic channels in promoting trade under the constraints of economic sanctions. The significance of this research lies in its illumination of the relationship between diplomatic relations and trade, thus laying the groundwork for future studies.