“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable,” as Mark Twain once said. 

It is well-known that North Korea for the last fifty or so years has not been forthcoming with its statistical data, and there have been many discussions about the reliability of the data that is being provided by the state in recent decades.

However, the trend is not new, and even between the 1950s-1960s, when the North Korean Central Bureau of Statistics published statistical yearbooks fairly regularly, the question arises: to what extent did the figures published in those yearbooks reflect the actual economic conditions in the