North Korea has offered to allow Russian companies develop a copper deposit in a northern North Korean province, an April 27 report from the Far East Development Ministry stated.

A North Korean delegation asked its Russian counterpart to examine that prospect, which would help cover the costs of energy provision to the isolated state’s eastern seaboard, at the seventh Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation in Pyongyang, the report stated.

The copper asset is in Onsang County in North Hamgyong Province, which borders China and Russia.
A ministry spokeswoman in Moscow declined to indicate either the prospective