Sanctions? Solar panel sales to North Koreans are booming for these small businesses

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post)

Doing business with North Korea is next to impossible nowadays, particularly after the latest round of U.N. sanctions are now restricting shipments of iron, iron ore and seafood from China and other countries. But the sale of solar panels remains legal and some business owners are profiting.

Yuan Huan is a good example. She manages Sangle Solar Power, a shop in the Chinese city of Dandong. Dandong borders North Korea and accounts for about 70 percent of all the trade that goes on between China and its neighbor. According to this report from Agence France-Presse, Huan is frequently visited by North Korean traders with “wads of cash.” North Koreans want solar panels and business is booming for her and other solar panel outlets. Official figures from China report a total of 466,248 solar panels were exported to North Korea last year.

Why the demand? Electricity, among other natural resources, are in short supply in a country where even existing generators are outdated and frequently break down. So many citizens — at least two percent of the country’s population according to some estimates — are investing in solar power as an alternative. The sales of solar panels have so far avoided the ever-growing number of blacklisted products that cannot be sold to North Koreans.

You would think that selling to North Koreans would be a difficult process. But no so. Sangle’s orders are handled through a third-party Chinese logistics company that ships products across the “Friendship Bridge” which connects Dandong to the North Korean city of Sinuiju.  Some customers even place orders by phone. “It is actually quite easy for traders to go back and forth,” Huang told AFP. Besides solar panels, shopkeepers in Dandong also report brisk sales of ginseng, dried mushrooms and dried ants (they’re good for joint pain, didn’t you know?) to North Korean consumers.

You would think that the average price of $400 to $2,100 for solar panels would be beyond what the typical North Korean could afford, but many of the country’s urban residents do have adequate disposable income to pay, according to one researcher from Johns Hopkins University.

How long will this the solar panel boom continue? No one knows for sure. “It seems that overall, there are fewer North Korean traders coming over recently, but we’re not affected by what’s happening politically,” Shi Zhiyong, who manages another solar power shop, told the AFP.