Extremely secretive about its industrial might, North Korea has a fairly robust steelmaking capacity of about 12 million mt/year, but recent intelligence indicates that actual production is just a fraction of that.
The country's crude steel production in 2015 was at its lowest annual level in about 20 years -- 1.079 million mt, according to data from the New York-based company Trading Economics and its website TradingEconomics.com.
That 2015 figure of just over 1 million mt is down from 1.22 million mt a year earlier and substantially lower than North Korea's peak output of 3.4 million mt in 1990.
According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI.org) a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex is North Korea's largest steel mill, capable of producing about 6 million mt/year of steel, or about half the country's total capacity.
In 1975, the Soviet Union provided technology and equipment for primary steelmaking and hot- and cold-rolled steel products. The Soviets provided further assistance during the 1980s, such as a 100-mt basic oxygen converter, but after break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia stopped supplying coke after Kim Il Sung's death in 1994.
In 1996, the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex installed equipment to produce low-carbon steel and pig iron without coke. At the time, there were reports that coke shortages and possibly other problems caused the facility to operate well below its capacity during the 1990s. Kim Jong Il visited the facility in August 2000 and stressed the need to modernize the complex. Production processes at the facility were upgraded to increase production in 2001.
North Korea also operates the following steel mills: the Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex in Songnim, North Hwanghae Province; the Songjin Steel Complex in Kimch'aek, North Hamgyong Province; Ch'ollima Steel in Namp'o; the Ch'ongjin Ironworks in Ch'ongjin, North Hamgyong Province; the 4.13 Ironworks in Namp'o; the No. 8 Ironworks in Songgan-kun, Chagang Province; and the Taedonggang Ironworks.
North Korea is one of the world's "most centrally directed and least open economies," according to the CIA's World Factbook, and "faces chronic economic problems." As a result, the CIA contends that North Korea's "industrial and power output have stagnated for years at a fraction of pre-1990 levels."
North Korea also has iron ore reserves of 400 million mt and annual iron ore output increased to 10 million mt in the 1990s from 8 million mt in 1985, according to Western estimates.
