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North Korea’s Automotive Industry Affected by U.S. Congress Sanctions

The bicameral legislature of the federal government just passed a round of sanctions that will affect not only the automotive industry of North Korea but businesses that operate in the communist haven as well. These penalties come as a repercussion to the nuclear test performed by the Korean People’s Army in January under Kim Jong-un’s command.
Pyeonghwa Cuckoo 1 photo
Photo: Pyeonghwa Motors
North Korea is as impoverished as it gets, with its population living from day to day. To make things more miserable for everyone, the dictatorship prefers to spend whatever hard currency it has on its nuclear program and the extravagant lifestyle of that fatty with the funny hairdo that executes state officials if they don’t laugh out loud at his poor jokes.

Given the circumstances, the sanctions passed by U.S. Congress spell trouble for North Korea’s already troubled car-making industry. The penalties in question restrict North Korea from making transactions with American banks. As if that weren’t enough bad news, businesses operating in N.K. are now restricted from doing business in the U.S. If outside companies continue to do business with North Korea, they’ll be blacklisted.

In other words, the U.S. will penalize every single company that has financial dealings with North Korea, regardless of the country of origin. The full scope of these sanctions can be summed as follows: 90 percent of components used by the car-making sector of North Korea come from China. Furthermore, the Chinese invested approximately $9 million last year in a truck factory near Pyongyang, the capital of the East Asian country.

I feel sorry for the poor people of North Korea that it has come to this, mostly because Kim Jong-un is an obnoxious bastard with rotten objectives in mind. But then again, I won’t be sorry to see automakers such as Pyeonghwa Motors bite the dust. Just look at the Kia Sorento-inspired SUV featured in the photograph above and try to fool yourself into thinking “Yes, I would love to drive a Pyeonghwa Cuckoo on a daily basis.”
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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