North Korea admits being hit by months-long surge in petrol prices as sanctions bite

North Korean officials on Monday for the first time admitted a months-long surge in petrol prices in the capital city in the wake of international sanctions.
The prices shot up to one and a half times higher than before starting around April and they remained high, the director of the country’s major think tank said in an interview with Kyodo in Pyongyang.
But Kim Chol, who heads the Economic Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences, said: “The situation is not that the prices…