Upwards of 90% of North Koreans supplement their official incomes through market activity, and in the years leading up to Pyongyang's closure of North Korea's border in response to COVID-19, the growth of market space around the country had been at a fever pitch. But what about in the years since 2020?
Black and grey market activity has been a key driver of the North Korean economy for decades, and they are often the only way citizens can meet their daily needs or earn money for necessary expenses.
As such, market activity has long been used as a proxy for the state of the country's economy as official state data is often lacking in detail and credibility; and the health of marketplaces reflect the ups and downs of DPRK trade with China, and the central government's ever-changing attitudes toward market activity.
AccessDPRK has monitored the annual expansion of market infrastructure and vendor space, and has used commercial satellite imagery to detect changes to the overall available market area dating back to 2011.
Prior to the pandemic, the overall trend under Kim Jong Un had been one of intensifying market area growth, and in 2019, a record 23,260 square meters of additional vendor space was built nationwide. (This is only new construction and doesn't take into account markets that may have declined for various reasons. However, prior to COVID, market infrastructure rarely dropped in any particular county.)
However, in the following year, as COVID policies took hold, the amount of gross new space (vendor stalls and open-air spaces) constructed nationwide dropped 68% to just 7,450 square meters in 2020 and then to a mere 630 square meters of identifiable growth in 2021.
For this post-pandemic 2020-2025 survey, I have focused on the amount of covered vendor stall space (buildings) only, and not enlargements of open-air spaces that don't host vendor stalls on a permanent basis. Stall space more accurately reflects the health of each individual market as the building or demolition of vendor structures strongly indicates the level of local demand.
At the time of writing, 69 market towns are covered by Google Earth imagery from the year 2025. A further 69 towns have imagery from 2024. These locations represent 222 total markets from every part of the country, equating to 48% of the 477 known permanent markets in North Korea.
Reviewing these towns shows that market growth remains limited compared to pre-COVID, despite improvements in trade with China and Russia; but growth is nonetheless occurring.
In total, combined for the years 2020-2025, net market growth for the 222 markets reviewed showed only a gain of 9,905 square meters worth of vendor stalls, averaging out to 1,981 sq. m./year - the lowest average annual rate since 2011 and an annual growth rate decline of 91% compared to the high point of 2019.
However, most of that modest growth can be found due to only four markets: Sariwon Market #2 (38.510007° 125.766451°), Sariwon Market #4 (38.508158° 125.742289°), and the Pyongyang-Hadang Markets #2 and #3 (39.054520° 125.721985°) totaled 5,140 square meters of growth, accounting for over 50% of the total net growth in North Korea's market space for the time.
This concentrated distribution of market growth may reflect difficulties in improving goods availability through the whole country, but that can't be determined solely through satellite imagery.
Of the 222 markets reviewed, twenty-six markets showed an increase in vendor space and fifteen markets declined in space, with four of those markets either fully demolished or had their vendor buildings removed. The other 181 markets showed no meaningful change in their physical structures over the five years, which would not unusual for any give five-year period.
The four markets that closed are: Haksan (39.430997° 126.021379°), Nampo-Waudo (38.723984° 125.348461°), Tokryong* Market #2 (40.219230° 124.694337°), and Yomjon (37.766101° 126.127783°).
This dramatic slump in growth also matches reports of declines in on-the-ground activity within the markets and the struggling economic recovery in North Korea post-pandemic.
Following the country's lockdown, agricultural imports and food stores plummeted, and daily goods like toothpaste and cooking oil were in short supply, even in Pyongyang's modern supermarkets. In street markets, the availability of any commodities that had been sourced overseas quickly ran out. That drop in supply of imported items didn't return to normal for some product classes until 2024.
Visible declines in market crowd sizes have also been reported, and as Professor Lim Eul Chul of the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University told Radio Free Asia in 2022, "mobility must be guaranteed for a market to a certain extent, but since mobility is not guaranteed, the market inevitably shrinks. Second, raw materials, fuel, and various subsidiary materials must be smoothly supplied from China;" with new national policies to bring market forces back under state control, they aim "for marketization that is managed and led by the state. As a result, the market is bound to contract." (emphasis added)
Those declines, over time, would eventually necessitate the physical removal of market structures as supplies persistently waned.
Dedicated market days and hours vary across municipalities and can be arbitrarily changed by authorities, so it's difficult to get a complete picture of human activity within the markets using sources like Google Earth, however, following roughly three years of very few visible examples of crowds at markets, large crowds were visible at fairly widespread locations again in February 2024.
And so, although the markets have clearly struggled in the last five years, there are finally signs pointing to a return to normal in many parts of the country.
The conclusion is that for the 2020-2025 period, the market's resiliency and the ingenuity of North Korean citizens helped to keep market activities alive in the face of a global pandemic and the worst government crackdowns on economic activity in a generation.
Market growth slowed considerably, but despite the reduction in some market spaces and the elimination of others, net growth continued to occur; albeit at a limited pace compared to earlier years.
With that in mind, for some rural areas, recovery may not be fully possible in the short-term, as logistics chains and supply and demand pressures shift within provinces and nationally. So while the national economy continues to recover, the local effects may be felt for years to come.
*Note: The Tokryong market does not have recent imagery in Google Earth, but the market closed in 2021 and was reviewed in Planet for a series of articles I wrote with Radio Free Asia, and its closure status has been verified in 2024 and 2025.
I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters who help make AccessDPRK possible: Donald Pearce, David M., Dylan D, Joe Bishop-Henchman, Joel Parish, John Pike, Jonathan J., NO ONE, Kbechs87, Raymond Ha, Russ Johnson, Squadfan, Timberwolf, and Yong H.
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