North Korea Enterprises

Introduction

Enterprises, industries, locations, organizational links, and economic activity in North Korea.

Database Information

Version & Update Information

Current metadata status: Development. Public Explore is not yet enabled. The first release notes will add a version identifier, substantive update date, change summary, expected update cadence, and archive policy.

Codebook

Codebook not available yet

Citation

For provisional reference, cite the Organization of Power Lab as creator of the North Korea Enterprises Database and include the version, access date, and permanent release URL. A final copy-ready citation will be published with the first versioned release.

Data Coverage

The development database covers North Korean enterprises, industries, locations, administering organizations, ownership or affiliation evidence, and reported economic activity. Temporal coverage, uncertainty, sanctions-sensitive fields, and known gaps remain to be verified.

Schema

The database is maintained in the PostgreSQL schema `nkenterprises`. Its public schema description will identify approved tables, keys, relationships, and derived views after model-to-database verification. A public diagram or SQL artifact will be added when it is ready for release.

Data Sources & Methods

Enterprise records are assembled from project-curated public and research sources and reconciled across names, places, industries, and administering organizations. Release documentation will state identity, ownership, temporal, source-evidence, and uncertainty rules.

Current Structure

Configured Explore tools currently include Regional Directory. The metadata registry also contains 3 enabled download resources. These entries describe the development application surface; release readiness, table coverage, and public fields remain subject to the Database's vertical-slice review.

Planned Expansion

Planned work expands regional and enterprise directories, administrative and ownership histories, and connections to media evidence. Sanctions, sensitivity, licensing, and correction rules must be approved before broader release.

Lab Connections

Approaches

• Networks & Organizations
• Text as Data

Publications

• The Sky is High and the Emperor is Far Away: Regional Economic Innovation in Post-Famine North Korea — 2025

Research Streams

• Central-Regional Relations in Multi-Tier Systems
• Political Economy of Critical Sectors
• Frame Analysis with LLM
• Named Entity Recognition with LLM

Contributors

• Liang Ta, Wen 温亮達

Grants

• 2025 - 3Y - NSTC - Political Economy of North Korean Development — 2025

Relevant Literature

See literature for this database in Zotero.