Bait and Switch: North Korea’s Remarkable Role In Global Supply Chains
April 12th, 2025
Via The Economist, an article on North Korea’s remarkable entrenchment in global supply chains: What do salmon fillets, fake eyelashes and animated children’s TV shows all have in common? All these familiar parts of Western daily lives have recently been touched by North Korean labour. In an online shopping world where many consumers hit the “sort by price” button, […]
Read more »How a New Axis Called CRINK Is Working Against America
March 29th, 2025
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, a look at how China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have united to defy Western sanctions and undermine U.S. interests: An axis uniting China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—dubbed CRINK by some Western officials—has emerged from the war in Ukraine, a loose alliance united by a mutual disdain for the […]
Read more »Hermit Hackers: Why North Koreans Are Such Good Crypto Thieves
March 22nd, 2025
Via The Economist, an article on why North Korean hackers are such good crypto-thieves: FEBRUARY 21st was a typical day, recalls Ben Zhou, the boss of ByBit, a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange. Before going to bed, he approved a fund transfer between the firm’s accounts, a “typical manoeuvre” performed while servicing more than 60m users around the […]
Read more »On Chinese Tuna Boats, North Koreans Trawl for Cash for Kim Jong-un
February 24th, 2025
Courtesy of the New York Times, a report on how – thousands of miles from home – North Koreans work on Chinese tuna longliners in the Indian Ocean for pay that goes to their leader: They spent up to 10 years at sea, toiling in some of the harshest conditions distant-water fishing crews ?can face. […]
Read more »North Korea’s Economic Crisis: Solutions or More Controls?
February 4th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a look at how a pattern of tightening market controls and soaring prices has culminated in an ambitious government intervention in North Korea – a comprehensive plan to regulate the grain trade: North Korea finds itself in the grip of a severe economic crisis marked by a dramatic currency devaluation and soaring prices, […]
Read more »North Korea In BRICS: A Reach Too Far?
October 2nd, 2024
Via the Asia Times, an article on how Pyongyang’s accession would undermine the grouping’s emerging credibility as a counterweight to the West-led world order: North Korea’s potential membership in BRICS, the bloc named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that is now expanding beyond that core deeper into the so-called Global South, presents […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.