Reuters learned how North Korea earns foreign currency by exporting eyelashes

In 2023 alone, North Korea exported 1,680 tons of false eyelashes, beards and wigs worth about $167 million to China , reports Reuters . According to the agency, these goods are then repackaged and sold, including to Western countries.

North Korea earns “millions of dollars” from the export of false eyelashes and wigs, sold in stores around the world under the guise of being made in China, Reuters writes, citing dozens of interviewed beauty industry experts and data from North Korean and Chinese customs.

As the agency notes, the destination of almost all of North Korea's declared exports is China, and wigs and false eyelashes accounted for almost 60% of the country's such exports in 2023 - the DPRK exported 1,680 tons of false eyelashes, beards and wigs to China worth about $167 million (for comparison: in 2019, North Korea exported 1,829 tons of products worth $31.1 million). For comparison, all North Korean exports to China in 2022 amounted to $1.3 billion.

Experts interviewed by Reuters explained that North Korea has long been a major exporter of wigs and false eyelashes, but during the COVID-19 pandemic , when strict anti-Covid restrictions were introduced in the country and borders were closed, exports fell sharply. Nevertheless, already in 2023, a significant part of the trade in North Korean-made eyelashes through China resumed, experts say.

The agency notes that the processing, packaging and worldwide sale of North Korean false eyelashes and wigs, conducted openly in neighboring China, "gives Kim Jong Un's regime the ability to circumvent international sanctions by providing a vital source of foreign currency."

Chinese manufacturers began collaborating with North Korean factories to produce artificial eyelashes in the early 2000s, according to three Chinese factory executives. They said they value the country's labor force for its low cost and high quality eyelashes.

"We can assume that […] the millions of dollars every month that North Korea earns from the eyelash trade are being used by Kim Jong Un's regime," Seoul-based sanctions lawyer Shin Tong-chan told Reuters.

A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry told the agency that Beijing and Pyongyang "are friendly neighbors" and that "normal cooperation between the two countries, which is legal and in accordance with requirements, should not be exaggerated."

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International sanctions against North Korea were introduced in 2006 after the first successful test of North Korean nuclear weapons. UN Security Council Resolution 1718 demanded that the North Korean leadership stop nuclear testing and banned the export of a number of military equipment and luxury goods to North Korea. Subsequently, the sanctions were expanded several times. Currently, most of the DPRK's foreign currency savings in foreign jurisdictions are frozen, and UN countries are prohibited from exporting machine tools, minerals, steel and iron, importing ships, fabrics, coal, metals, and food products to the country.

Over many years under sanctions, North Korea has learned to circumvent them, including through shell companies, through intermediaries represented by companies from friendly countries, as well as with the help of hackers and cryptocurrencies. As the NYT wrote, before the tightening of sanctions, the export of iron ore and coal accounted for more than a third of the DPRK's total exports, and in some African countries, according to The Diplomat, North Korean weapons, often clones of Soviet models, continue to be in demand. The Japanese Yomiuri wrote back in 2017 that the DPRK earns $1–2 billion a year from counterfeit goods and sending labor. North Korea also exports ginseng and other traditional medicines.

According to South Korea's National Intelligence Service, there are between 50,000 and 60,000 North Korean workers working abroad, mostly in Russia and China, whose job is to import foreign currency. As SCMP wrote, many of the DPRK citizens work in North Korean restaurants abroad, including in China. South Korean authorities have repeatedly recommended that their citizens not visit such restaurants, since, according to Seoul, they allow Pyongyang to earn foreign currency to finance its nuclear missile program.

In September 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, after a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, announced that Moscow and Beijing would abandon sanctions against the DPRK. According to him, these restrictions were adopted in a completely different geopolitical situation. Putin later clarified that Moscow will continue to implement current restrictions on military-technical cooperation imposed by the UN.