# The Unexpected Rise of North Korea’s Economy

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 18 Aug 2026, 20 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/ee990b7d-fc02-4247-a086-b4aa01597704/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

North Korea was supposed to be broke and isolated. Now, it’s enjoying an unexpected economic boom. On today’s Big Take Asia podcast, Bloomberg’s Cat Barton and host K. Oanh Ha unpack North Korea’s shift from pandemic-era hardship to a multibillion-dollar windfall, and discuss how the country’s newfound wealth is reshaping geopolitical alliances. Read more: Kim Jong Un Flouted Sanctions to Amass $22 Billion Windfall Further listening: North Korea’s Nuclear Program Reaches Tipping Point for the US Watch, from Originals: Why Sanctions Aren’t Stopping North Korea See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:09] Speaker 2: North Korea's economy is one of the smallest and most
[0:12] Speaker 2: isolated in the world, but right now it's growing fast.
[0:17] Speaker 2: South Korea's Central Bank estimates North Korea's economy grew for
[0:21] Speaker 2: a third straight year in twenty twenty five. That's despite
[0:25] Speaker 2: international sanctions aimed at limiting the regime's access to money,
[0:29] Speaker 2: and signs of North Korea's newfound prosperity are all over
[0:33] Speaker 2: the country's capital.
[0:35] Speaker 3: The transformation on Kyongyang streets is remarkable. The city's skyline
[0:39] Speaker 3: has been transformed. The streets used to be empty, and
[0:43] Speaker 3: now you have traffic jams. There are more privately owned
[0:47] Speaker 3: Chinese vehicles.
[0:49] Speaker 2: Kat Barton is Bloomberg's soul beer chief. She covers the
[0:52] Speaker 2: Korean peninsula and says it's not just the economy that's booming.
[0:57] Speaker 2: North Korean leader Kim Jong un is also having a moment.
[1:01] Speaker 2: Kim Jong Earn's presence is particularly notablet it is his
[1:04] Speaker 2: first foray into international diplomacy since it came into power.
[1:09] Speaker 2: Last year, he was invited by Chinese President Shi Jinping
[1:12] Speaker 2: to attend a military parade in Beijing to mark the
[1:15] Speaker 2: eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II.
[1:18] Speaker 3: We've got Kim Jong and Vadimir Putsen front and center
[1:21] Speaker 3: on the right and left hand side of President c
[1:24] Speaker 3: The imagery is very, very striking.
[1:26] Speaker 2: It's all part of a remarkable turnaround for North Korea
[1:30] Speaker 2: and for Kim, who spent much of his fifteen years
[1:33] Speaker 2: in power grappling with challenges from international sanctions to global isolation.
[1:39] Speaker 2: Then there were the failed talks with President Donald Trump
[1:42] Speaker 2: over Kim's nuclear weapons program in twenty nineteen.
[1:46] Speaker 1: Kim was broke.
[1:47] Speaker 3: Kim was humiliated domestically because he'd staked political capital on
[1:52] Speaker 3: this deal. In this meeting with US President Trump, the
[1:55] Speaker 3: North Korean economy had been completely.
[1:57] Speaker 1: Hammered by sanctions.
[2:00] Speaker 3: Western powers had come together to block North Create's ability
[2:04] Speaker 3: to export. They didn't want Kim Jong un to be
[2:07] Speaker 3: developing his nuclear weapons program. And then you had the
[2:10] Speaker 3: COVID nineteen pandemic, and at that point they sealed their
[2:14] Speaker 3: own borders, and so all the trade that they had
[2:16] Speaker 3: had with China just ground to a halt.
[2:20] Speaker 2: At the time, it looked like the sanctions were doing
[2:22] Speaker 2: exactly what they were supposed to do, keeping North Korea
[2:25] Speaker 2: weak and dependent on outside help. Today, Kim is anything
[2:30] Speaker 2: but that. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump posted a
[2:34] Speaker 2: throwback photo of him with Kim in twenty nineteen and
[2:37] Speaker 2: alluded to their romance. I understand him, he understands me.
[2:42] Speaker 2: You're doing wargames. I get along with him. You know
[2:45] Speaker 2: he didn't like. They didn't like, and in a win
[2:47] Speaker 2: for Kim, Trump directed the Pentagon to substantially reduce joint
[2:51] Speaker 2: military exercises with South Korea. Trump's been frustrated with Soul
[2:56] Speaker 2: for not providing more support for the Iran War. He
[3:00] Speaker 2: said the drills were costly and sent an inappropriate signal
[3:03] Speaker 2: to North Korea. In the last few years, Kim's also
[3:06] Speaker 2: gotten cozy with Russia and China. Now he's got tens
[3:11] Speaker 2: of billions of dollars in new cash flow and little
[3:14] Speaker 2: reason to compromise with any of his enemies.
[3:18] Speaker 3: Kim doesn't have any incentive at the moment to come
[3:21] Speaker 3: back to the negotiating table. He has money, he has
[3:24] Speaker 3: diplomatic backing from Russia. He's had Shijinping visit him in
[3:29] Speaker 3: Pyongyang earlier this year. He's not in a position where
[3:32] Speaker 3: he needs to katao to Washington. So the idea of
[3:37] Speaker 3: using these sanctions as a means of squeezing him to
[3:41] Speaker 3: force him to give up his nuclear weapons is just
[3:43] Speaker 3: not realistic at this stage.
[3:50] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanha.
[3:54] Speaker 2: Every week we take you inside some of the world's
[3:56] Speaker 2: biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons, and
[4:01] Speaker 2: businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today in the
[4:05] Speaker 2: show North Korea's Unexpected Comeback, how did one of the
[4:09] Speaker 2: world's most sanctioned countries start raking in billions? And what
[4:13] Speaker 2: happens when a para state finds a way to flex
[4:17] Speaker 2: its power. In twenty twenty, North Korea was in dire straits.
[4:28] Speaker 2: The COVID nineteen pandemic forced the country to shut its
[4:31] Speaker 2: borders and cut off trade with China, its largest economic partner.
[4:36] Speaker 2: That pushed it deeper into isolation. At the same time,
[4:40] Speaker 2: poor harvests were fueling a growing food crisis.
[4:43] Speaker 3: It was a very very difficult period for North Korea
[4:46] Speaker 3: and then it was compounded over the course of twenty
[4:48] Speaker 3: twenty by a series of bad harvests, bad flooding, weather issues.
[4:54] Speaker 3: You know that soldiers had had to go and rescue people.
[4:56] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Cat Barton says conditions had deteriorations to the point
[5:00] Speaker 2: where Kim Jong un appeared on state television and offered
[5:04] Speaker 2: a rare public apology kurrizo no mudo bianago money.
[5:11] Speaker 3: Kim made this very emotional apology to his people, saying
[5:15] Speaker 3: that he regretted that he hadn't as leader, hadn't been
[5:18] Speaker 3: able to improve their quality of life, and shed it
[5:21] Speaker 3: here on state TV.
[5:23] Speaker 2: But if twenty twenty marked the low point of Kim's rule,
[5:26] Speaker 2: the years since have brought about a remarkable turnaround. Today
[5:31] Speaker 2: money is flowing into the country from new and unexpected places.
[5:36] Speaker 3: So we have crunched the data on this, and it
[5:40] Speaker 3: could be as much as twenty two billion US dollars
[5:44] Speaker 3: that Kim has earned in the last four years. Now,
[5:48] Speaker 3: just for context, the North Korean economy was about thirty
[5:52] Speaker 3: four billion in twenty twenty five, so it's a huge
[5:55] Speaker 3: amount of money, and it's four times the amount of
[5:58] Speaker 3: money that Kim had earned in the press four years
[6:00] Speaker 3: from that. And interestingly, also none of this windfall is aid.
[6:06] Speaker 3: The North Korean economy has typically always been reliant on
[6:09] Speaker 3: some degree of aid, and he's not receiving that anymore.
[6:13] Speaker 2: Kat says the single biggest source of money flowing into
[6:17] Speaker 2: North Korea today comes from Russia. Vladimir Putin's invasion of
[6:22] Speaker 2: Ukraine in twenty twenty two offered Kim an unlikely lifeline.
[6:27] Speaker 2: As Moscow burns through its supply of munitions, it turned
[6:30] Speaker 2: to Pyongyang for a rare source of artillery from the
[6:33] Speaker 2: Soviet days.
[6:35] Speaker 1: It was like he won the lottery.
[6:36] Speaker 3: He discovered that he had exactly what Russia needed after
[6:41] Speaker 3: Putin invaded Ukraine. For decades, Kim Jong UN's own security
[6:46] Speaker 3: strategy had been conventional artillery bombardment of Soul, and Kim
[6:51] Speaker 3: had this huge stockpile of weaponry that he was planning
[6:53] Speaker 3: to use for that purpose. However, in the intervening years,
[6:57] Speaker 3: he's obviously developed nuclear weapons, so that conventional artillery the
[7:00] Speaker 3: ammunition was not actually as essential to his own defenses
[7:04] Speaker 3: as it used to be. South Korea's intelligence agency estimate
[7:07] Speaker 3: it was about now more than thirty thousand container loads
[7:11] Speaker 3: of weapons have gone to Russia, and they've also deployed
[7:14] Speaker 3: around sixteen thousand troops. So the Russia specific section is
[7:20] Speaker 3: estimated to be about fourteen billion, and of that ninety
[7:24] Speaker 3: percent is due to the war the military relationship between
[7:28] Speaker 3: the two countries.
[7:31] Speaker 2: Katz says the payoff for North Korea isn't just financial.
[7:35] Speaker 2: In twenty twenty four, Russia and North Korea signed a
[7:39] Speaker 2: mutual defense pact, committing to come to each other's aid
[7:42] Speaker 2: if either country was attacked. They also deepened ties in
[7:46] Speaker 2: military trade and investment. Russia's war with Ukraine has given
[7:51] Speaker 2: the prior country and its leader something more valuable than money,
[7:55] Speaker 2: military knowledge, battlefield experience, and access to advanced technology.
[8:01] Speaker 3: Now, with help from the Russian military, he has been
[8:05] Speaker 3: able to launch warships. He has got technology on those
[8:09] Speaker 3: warships air to air missiles, which seemingly is coming directly
[8:12] Speaker 3: from the Russian military relationship, So he is getting this
[8:16] Speaker 3: kind of technical know how, technical expertise. The Ukrainian intelligence
[8:20] Speaker 3: agencies told us that they believe that North Korea is
[8:23] Speaker 3: producing drones in factories in North Korea that are then
[8:27] Speaker 3: being used. That level of knowledge is something that also
[8:31] Speaker 3: goes beyond just a financial value, right. It absolutely makes
[8:35] Speaker 3: them a far more dangerous fighting force. They now have
[8:38] Speaker 3: soldiers who have experience in modern drome warfare, which South
[8:43] Speaker 3: Korean soldiers.
[8:43] Speaker 2: Do not, But Russia's need for military support isn't the
[8:48] Speaker 2: only factor driving North Korea's fortunes. Rising tensions between Washington
[8:53] Speaker 2: and Beijing have given China a reason to keep North
[8:56] Speaker 2: Korea close.
[8:58] Speaker 3: China is probably not thrilled about North Korea having nuclear weapons.
[9:03] Speaker 3: They were not particularly happy when North Korea decided to
[9:06] Speaker 3: become the only third party in the world to intervene
[9:09] Speaker 3: directly in the Russia Ukraine War. But at the same time,
[9:12] Speaker 3: China is locked in this ongoing trade tension with the
[9:16] Speaker 3: United States, and they need North Korea.
[9:18] Speaker 1: They need them to be a buffer zone. It's very convenient.
[9:21] Speaker 3: They do not want North Korea to collapse, and as
[9:24] Speaker 3: a result, they're prepared to pay for it to help
[9:26] Speaker 3: keep them afloat.
[9:27] Speaker 2: That steady support is showing up in the numbers. Trade
[9:31] Speaker 2: between China and North Korea has been climbing. In the
[9:34] Speaker 2: first half of the year. Trade reached one point five
[9:37] Speaker 2: billion dollars, its highest level since international sanctions were imposed
[9:41] Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. That's more than twenty times the level
[9:45] Speaker 2: during the pandemic. Kat says publicly, China tries to maintain
[9:49] Speaker 2: compliance with the United Nations sanctions regime. Since two thousand
[9:53] Speaker 2: and six, the fifteen member UN Security Council has slapped
[9:57] Speaker 2: a series of economic sanctions on North CA for developing
[10:01] Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, and the US. The EU, South Korea, and
[10:05] Speaker 2: Japan have expanded their own sanctions in twenty twenty two
[10:09] Speaker 2: in response to North Korea's increased missile testing.
[10:13] Speaker 3: So if you look at the China trade data, it's
[10:15] Speaker 3: quite bizarre because a lot of it is things like winks,
[10:18] Speaker 3: it's false eyelashes.
[10:20] Speaker 1: Those things are not sanctioned officially.
[10:24] Speaker 2: Wigs and false eyelashes make up the bulk of what
[10:27] Speaker 2: China imports from North Korea, but there are also reports
[10:31] Speaker 2: of sanctioned items like call that make it across the border.
[10:35] Speaker 3: A lot of what is happening is that the raw
[10:37] Speaker 3: materials are exported to North Korea, for example, human hair.
[10:41] Speaker 3: Then North Korean workers who are paid far far less
[10:45] Speaker 3: than Chinese workers are doing the hard work of gluing
[10:48] Speaker 3: these false eyelashes or preparing the wigs and whatever, and
[10:51] Speaker 3: then the finished products are exported back to China.
[10:55] Speaker 2: And then there's a third source of income that's outright
[10:58] Speaker 2: criminal currency theft. North Korea is home to some of
[11:03] Speaker 2: the world's most successful cyber criminals. Hacking groups tied to
[11:07] Speaker 2: Piongyang are now responsible for more than seventy percent of
[11:11] Speaker 2: global thefts. Last year alone, hacking groups associated with or
[11:15] Speaker 2: sponsored by the North Korean government stole two billion dollars
[11:19] Speaker 2: worth of crypto.
[11:21] Speaker 3: There's a South Korean lawmaker who is actually a North
[11:23] Speaker 3: Korean defector himself. He used to work on the weapons
[11:26] Speaker 3: of mass destruction programs, and he told me once when
[11:29] Speaker 3: I interviewed him that the recruiters would come to the
[11:31] Speaker 3: schools and they would take the top one or two students.
[11:34] Speaker 3: They would go to the hacking programs. The next top
[11:37] Speaker 3: students they would go to the weapons programs. So it's
[11:40] Speaker 3: even above the pursuit of nuclear weapons, according to this
[11:43] Speaker 3: defector turned South Korean lawmaker. And what we've seen in
[11:47] Speaker 3: the last decade is that a global uptake of crypto,
[11:50] Speaker 3: a global usage of crypto, has accelerated and spread, and
[11:54] Speaker 3: there's not that much being done to stop them.
[11:56] Speaker 2: To be honest, what striking is that much of this
[11:59] Speaker 2: money never actually enters North Korea.
[12:03] Speaker 3: When we talk about this fourteen billion that Kim Jong
[12:05] Speaker 3: un has earned, when we talk about the two billion
[12:07] Speaker 3: the hackers have stolen. He's not getting bags of cash
[12:11] Speaker 3: in Pyongyang right That money is being laundered largely through
[12:15] Speaker 3: Chinese organized crime networks, and the North Korean regime is
[12:18] Speaker 3: then getting access to clean bank accounts of yuan or
[12:22] Speaker 3: maybe even usd that they can then use outside of
[12:25] Speaker 3: North Korea to buy what they need to bring whether
[12:28] Speaker 3: it's gizmo's for their weapons programs, whether it's grain, cooking, oil, coal,
[12:33] Speaker 3: whatever they need to buy to bring back in.
[12:35] Speaker 1: They can do that.
[12:36] Speaker 3: The money doesn't ever come back to North Korea, but
[12:38] Speaker 3: it's still serving the regime very very nicely from outside
[12:42] Speaker 3: the country.
[12:49] Speaker 2: After the break, we find out what Kim's doing with
[12:52] Speaker 2: all this wealth and what does this newfound strength mean
[12:55] Speaker 2: for North Korea's neighbors and the US. Inside North Korea,
[13:15] Speaker 2: there are clear signs that the country is becoming richer.
[13:19] Speaker 2: While most journalists haven't been permitted to visit the country
[13:22] Speaker 2: since the pandemic, some tour groups are allowed. In Bloomberg's
[13:26] Speaker 2: cad Martin says, a tour guide she spoke to says, Pyongyang,
[13:30] Speaker 2: the country's capital has been transformed. You can even see
[13:34] Speaker 2: the changes from space.
[13:35] Speaker 3: The issue for North Korea is that they just didn't
[13:37] Speaker 3: have that much electricity outside of the capitol, so at
[13:41] Speaker 3: night there was just this black spot between China and
[13:44] Speaker 3: South Korea that was not illuminated.
[13:46] Speaker 1: But you can see visibly in their satellite images.
[13:49] Speaker 3: Over the last four years that has improved significantly in Pyongyang,
[13:54] Speaker 3: but also elsewhere across the country.
[13:56] Speaker 1: Kim Jong un has repeatedly touted.
[13:59] Speaker 3: His content struction projects, and it does indeed appear to
[14:02] Speaker 3: be the case that they are building large numbers of homes,
[14:05] Speaker 3: they are building factories. There has been a kind of
[14:08] Speaker 3: domestic construction boom that is starting to change, not just Pyongyang,
[14:13] Speaker 3: the capital, but even other smaller cities outside of that capital.
[14:18] Speaker 2: Trade data suggests that North Korean's, especially the elite in Pyongyang,
[14:23] Speaker 2: are already spending more. In June, North Korea imported more
[14:27] Speaker 2: than a million dollars worth of sports and leisure products,
[14:30] Speaker 2: from ping pong balls and water skis to video games
[14:34] Speaker 2: and fitness equipment. But for governments in Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo,
[14:39] Speaker 2: the real concern is what's happening inside North Korea's military.
[14:44] Speaker 3: The most important thing, according to the United States Forces Korea,
[14:49] Speaker 3: which is the body that oversees the US military presence
[14:52] Speaker 3: in South Korea is the battle hardened soldiers have come
[14:55] Speaker 3: back from the Ukraine conflict and they have experience, they
[14:59] Speaker 3: have expertise in modern drone warfare. You've also seen as
[15:02] Speaker 3: a result of this military relationship that Kim has been
[15:05] Speaker 3: able to kind of compress his weapons development timelines, so
[15:09] Speaker 3: things that maybe used to take months years have been
[15:13] Speaker 3: improved in efficiency. What the Ukrainian military told us also
[15:18] Speaker 3: is that they've seen the quality of the munitions used
[15:21] Speaker 3: in the battlefield in Ukraine has improved. That the North
[15:23] Speaker 3: Koreans are not just copying, you know, a simple Russian
[15:26] Speaker 3: ballistic missile, but they're actually improving it.
[15:29] Speaker 1: They're doing it their own way.
[15:31] Speaker 3: Now the focus seems to be more on just building
[15:33] Speaker 3: out that conventional capacity, which gives him far more options
[15:37] Speaker 3: across the board and makes them far more dangerous for
[15:40] Speaker 3: South Korea and for the United States.
[15:41] Speaker 2: So then, really, is there any incentive for Kim Joun
[15:45] Speaker 2: to actually come back to the negotiation table to talk
[15:49] Speaker 2: about anything.
[15:50] Speaker 1: Not right now?
[15:51] Speaker 3: I think one of the other interesting things recently has
[15:54] Speaker 3: been that for Kim, he would have looked at Venezuela,
[15:57] Speaker 3: he would have looked at Iran, and he have thought, Wow,
[16:01] Speaker 3: I felt quite vindicated in my decision not to give
[16:03] Speaker 3: up those nuclear weapons, because from the North Korean perspective,
[16:06] Speaker 3: had Iran already got a nuclear weapon, no way would
[16:10] Speaker 3: they have been attacked as they were earlier this year.
[16:14] Speaker 2: What do you think is the biggest implication of this stronger,
[16:18] Speaker 2: wealthier North Korea for its neighbor, just for South Korea,
[16:22] Speaker 2: but also for its relationship with other neighbors around the region, China, Japan, but.
[16:28] Speaker 3: China, North Korea is obviously a useful buffer zone for
[16:32] Speaker 3: South Korea. This has fundamentally changed the nature of the
[16:36] Speaker 3: relationship between the two countries in the last couple of years,
[16:40] Speaker 3: Kim Jong earned officially. Both countries before were always theoretically
[16:45] Speaker 3: committed to unification, and they both kind of in their
[16:48] Speaker 3: constitutions laid claim to the entire Korean peninsula. But Kim
[16:51] Speaker 3: Jong in a few years ago got rid of that
[16:53] Speaker 3: and said South Korea is an enemy state. It's our
[16:56] Speaker 3: principal enemy. We will never unify.
[16:59] Speaker 1: You know.
[16:59] Speaker 3: They tore up the roads, they tore up railways that
[17:02] Speaker 3: had connected the two countries, and they've really hardened their
[17:05] Speaker 3: line in South Korea.
[17:07] Speaker 1: In contrast, we have a far more.
[17:09] Speaker 3: Traditionally Dubvish party in power now. The Democratic Party and
[17:13] Speaker 3: Lejiamung are traditionally far more open to outreach, to offering aid,
[17:17] Speaker 3: to engagement with North Korea, but all of their efforts
[17:20] Speaker 3: have been rebuffed. And the fact that Kim is in
[17:23] Speaker 3: this stronger than ever position, flush with cash, with a
[17:26] Speaker 3: more developed and serious, credible army than he's ever had before,
[17:31] Speaker 3: has really put him in a much stronger position, and
[17:33] Speaker 3: China certainly has no incentive to push him at this
[17:36] Speaker 3: stage to negotiate, So as far as we can tell,
[17:39] Speaker 3: it looks like the Kim regime is set to continue
[17:42] Speaker 3: for some time to come.
[17:45] Speaker 2: Now, what we're seeing so far is that both North
[17:48] Speaker 2: Korea and Kim junkown we've had a reversal of fortunes
[17:52] Speaker 2: right because of Ukraine. What happens if the war in
[17:56] Speaker 2: Ukraine ends tomorrow, you know, has Kim fundamentally change North
[18:01] Speaker 2: Korea's standing in the world.
[18:04] Speaker 3: He's managed to successfully milk the opportunity. For sure, If
[18:09] Speaker 3: and when the war stops, the money will stop because
[18:12] Speaker 3: Russia will no longer need a cheap ammunition, it will
[18:14] Speaker 3: no longer need ballistic missiles, it will no longer need
[18:17] Speaker 3: North Korean soldiers. But the more important longer term aspect is,
[18:21] Speaker 3: for sure the relationship with China. China has always traditionally
[18:24] Speaker 3: been the benefactor, and China, as I say, will not
[18:28] Speaker 3: allow North Korea to collapse. If the Ukraine war stops,
[18:31] Speaker 3: he will have that relationship with Beijing to fall back on,
[18:34] Speaker 3: and maybe it would be possible at that stage to
[18:36] Speaker 3: ramp it up.
[18:38] Speaker 2: It seems as if Kim has managed to in some
[18:41] Speaker 2: ways permanently alter North Korea's trajectory.
[18:44] Speaker 3: It is still an incredibly poor country and it is
[18:47] Speaker 3: still a very repressive country. We know even less about
[18:53] Speaker 3: it now than we used to, partly because as a
[18:56] Speaker 3: result of the COVID pandemic, the border has hard to
[19:00] Speaker 3: the point that you just do not get defectors escaping
[19:03] Speaker 3: in the same way that you used to. But it
[19:05] Speaker 3: does seem that the domestic controls remain obviously extremely close.
[19:11] Speaker 3: I mean, it's a police state, so it's a very
[19:13] Speaker 3: difficult place for people to live. And although the regime
[19:19] Speaker 3: the country is in a stronger position geopolitically, it still
[19:23] Speaker 3: struggles with its economy. Is this windfall necessarily going to
[19:27] Speaker 3: be transformative Are they going to have done enough to
[19:30] Speaker 3: keep them afloat into the future that could be lean
[19:33] Speaker 3: years ahead for sure.
[19:39] Speaker 2: This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
[19:42] Speaker 2: one ha To get more from The Big Take and
[19:45] Speaker 2: unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today
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