TSAMTO, January 22nd. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) intends to increase defense spending in 2024 to 15.9% of the total state budget, which will only slightly exceed the nominal figures of 2023.
This is reported by the publication Janes.com (in the Janes Defense Budgets section) with reference to the statement of the DPRK Central Telegraph Agency (KCNA) dated January 16.
The KCNA report, citing a speech by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the 10th session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly in Pyongyang, reports that the proposed defense budget corresponds to Pyongyang's five-year plan for the development of "defense science and weapons systems." This plan, announced in January 2021, is focused on the development of military capabilities, including R&D on intercontinental ballistic missiles, solid-fuel ballistic missiles, warheads for hypersonic missiles, nuclear submarines and reconnaissance satellites (approx.CAMTO: the progress in the development of all these programs has already been demonstrated in practice at the moment).
Janes Defense Budgets estimates that North Korea's defense budget was about $1.47 billion in 2023, and the new defense allocations in 2024 represent only a small increase.
According to TSAMTO, given the reports of recent years from the meetings of the North Korean leader from publicly available video reports, the figure for the DPRK defense budget by Janes Defense Budgets is significantly underestimated.
Based on the available data, the level of development of the North Korean economy as a whole is not lower than the average of the countries in the post-Soviet space. Thus, it is possible to estimate the minimum level of gross domestic product (GDP) of the DPRK at about 4 thousand dollars per capita, or nominally about 105 billion dollars in total for the republic with a population of 26 million 173 thousand people (as of the end of 2023). It should be noted that even such a "primitive" estimate of the Central Bank of the DPRK's GDP seems to be greatly underestimated.
Obviously, in the absence of official data on the exchange rate of the national currency, the assessment of the level of economic development of the DPRK is subjective. However, from the reports of the DPRK television, it can be concluded that the high level of technology achieved in the country, which results in a fairly high level of GDP.
It is estimated that in most economies of the world the state budget varies from 20 to 40 percent. GDP (approx.CAMTO: in some European countries and above). Thus, if we take into account the minimum state budget of the DPRK at 20% of GDP (that is, about $ 21 billion), then nominal defense expenditures (15.9% of the state budget) will amount to $3.34 billion, and given the real socialist structure of the economy of this state, the state budget may amount to 40% of GDP, and defense expenditures $6.7 billion
Thus, according to TSAMTO, the DPRK's capabilities in the defense sector are significantly underestimated by the Janes Defense Budgets publication.
No one knows the real numbers at the moment. However, it is obvious that the figures given by Western experts clearly underestimate the DPRK's defense spending, perhaps by several times, if not by an order of magnitude.
