North Korea's trade with China expanded to hit a record high of more than one billion dollars last year in a sign of its deepening dependency on Beijing, a South Korrean trade report said Sunday North Korean-Chinese trade volume jumped 35.4 percent year-on-year to a record of 1.38 billion dollars in 2004, according to the report released by the Seoul-based Korea International Trade Association.
North Korean exports to China rose 48 percent year-on-year to 585 million dollars while imports were also up 27 percent to 799 million dollars last year, the report said.
Impoverished North Korea largely imported pork and fuel oil from China while its exports focused on fisheries, iron ore and coal, it said.
North Korea's trade with South Korea and Japan, however, decreased 3.8 percent and 4.8 percent year-on-year to 697 and 252 million dollars each last year, the report said.
The trade organisation said it expected North Korea's trade with neighbouring China to keep expanding in 2005 because of their geological and political proximity.
North Korea's trade with China, South Korea and Japan accounted for 65 percent of its total external trade in 2003, the organisation said.