North Korea’s Internal Landscape The prolonged international sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic have drained North Korea’s foreign currency reserves and worsened resource depletion. However, Pyongyang’s unremitting pursuit of advancing nuclear and missile capabilities requires a significant input of money and resources. Therefore, it is forecast that the Kim Jong-un regime will continue to implement economic policies designed to tighten state control in 2024. One of the most notable developments in North Korea’s economic landscape in 2023 was that the Kim regime’s policy efforts to tighten state control over economic affairs began to extensively permeate into the agricultural and food sectors. Pyongyang’s recent discourse underscoring its achievements of revamping collectivism in the agricultural sector indicates that the Kim regime plans to continue to adopt this approach consistently in the years ahead. However, regional food shortages affecting the country, caused by chronic limitations of agricultural production and a lack of administrative capacity, will likely be the Kim regime’s biggest challenge in 2024. It is also anticipated that Pyongyang will regulate the pace of normalizing trade with China with strategic considerations. North Korea has started to restructure its trading system by tightening the state’s unitary control and regulations instead of adhering to the previously implemented measures that granted trading companies extensive autonomy. Moreover, considering Beijing’s position to distance itself from North Korea’s avowed shift toward Russia, Pyongyang will likely maintain efforts to steer the country’s economic affairs based on the “self-reliance” model for the time being instead of pushing to maximize trade with China. In Kim Jong-un’s early years in power, middle-class bureaucrats, affiliated with moneyed elites called Donju - “masters of money” in the private sector, established a mechanism of making private gains. However, if the Kim regime’s tightening of state control continues after the lifting of border closure in 2024, such mechanism will unlikely be restored, fomenting grievances among them. As Pyongyang is well aware of this possible backlash, it is ramping up ideological campaigns within economic divisions and strengthening the role of the party organizations. It is forecast that the Kim regime will boost such efforts in 2024 to further solidify its political control.

Ⅰ. Political Landscape on the Korean Peninsula

1. North Korea’s Internal Landscape
2. Recent Developments in North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program and Inter-
Korean Relations

Ⅱ. Political Landscape of Major Powers

1 . Political Landscape of East Asia
2. The U.S.
3. China
4. Japan
5. Russia

Ⅲ. Political Landscape in the World’s Major Regions

1. Southeast Asia
2. South Asia
3. Europe
4. The Middle East
5. Central Asia
6. Africa
7. Latin America and the Caribbean

Ⅳ. Global Issues and Governance

1 . International Finance and Monetary Issues
2. International Trade and Economic Security
3. International Law
4. Emerging Security: Cyber, Space, and AI
5. Environment: Climate Change·Energy
6. Development Cooperation