The financial sphere of North Korea was hit by a massive weapon. The SWIFT transaction system barred the country’s banks from accessing its global network.

The SWIFT abbreviation stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It was founded in 1973; the headquarters are in Brussels. Nowadays, over 10,000 companies including 1,000 corporations are using SWIFT. More than one million transactions are carried out daily through this banking system. So it must be really stressful for the North Korean banks to be barred from using this important service. There are twenty financial institutions in the SWIFT’s black list which includes the Bank of East Land, Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Kwangson Banking. Supposedly, such a closed-off country would barely notice the effect of these sanctions. But it is not so. The fallout from this ban can hurt the North Korean economy.

North Korea is not the only country that was put under the sanctions. SWIFT has recently suspended access for Iran to its system. However, this country didn’t sever all its economic and financial ties after that. Surely, the Iranian banks met some difficulties, but the financial sphere managed to avoid collapse. At the same time, the North Korean banks are likely to suffer more from this suspension as it can result in fast degradation of the banking system and tighter economic conditions in the country.