The World's Most Unlikely Boom: Inside North Korea's Pizza-And-QR-Code Economy.
It's a story that makes you do a double-take.
Based on WSJ reporting · Capital Wealth analysis by Sean Anees Saifi · June 9, 2026
A brightly lit modern pizza restaurant interior in an Asian city.
The Story
It's a story that makes you do a double-take. North Korea's economy is flourishing in ways not seen in years — aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and a knack for flouting sanctions. Visitors describe a Pyongyang of brick-oven pizza, QR-code payments, electric cars and a construction boom that built 10,000 new homes in a single year.
What This Means For The Book
The investable point isn't North Korea — it's the picture of a multipolar world where sanctions leak and rivals backstop their partners. It's a vivid case for the de-globalization theme we keep flagging, and why we favor defense, domestic energy and supply-chain resilience over a frictionless-trade assumption.
