While international sanctions and its own lack of resources have hindered the development of the hermit kingdom’s energy and resource sector, it can expect plenty of help from its friends should the barriers to extraction be removed.
The costs of extraction are high, and international sanctions would stop Pyongyang from selling them anyway.
Key point: North Korea could be loaded. However, without the enough financing and the right tools and expertise, it cannot use its resources or try to (illegally) sell them.
Who needs rockets when you have $10 trillion in resource riches? That is one estimate of the value of North Korea’s mineral wealth, enough to make any miner drool.
While international sanctions and its own lack of resources have hindered the development of the hermit kingdom’s energy and resource sector, it can expect plenty of help from its friends should the barriers to extraction be removed.