North Korea’s Central Bank has ordered provincial branches to create systems that allow people to directly report problems that arise in financial services.
“After detecting increasing public dissatisfaction and distrust of financial services, the Central Bank ordered provincial branches on Aug. 20 to allow people to directly report problems, attaching a document entitled, ‘Eliminate phenomena that lower bank credit,'” a Daily NK source in Pyongyang said recently.
The direct reason for the order was the Central Bank’s discovery that incidents of people abandoning the use of bank cards and keeping cash at home had increased in the bank’s financial statistics from the first half of 2025, the source said.
As public distrust and dissatisfaction with delayed withdrawals and commissions on electronic payments mount, the bank found that public savings and card usage had dropped sharply in the first half of the year.
In response, the Central Bank ordered that people be informed they can send complaints through electronic payment systems or through direct phone calls (01-370-4234, 4484) when they experience inconveniences during financial services, with people encouraged to send detailed information such as the date, bank name, branch name, financial service center name and financial service clerk’s name.
In particular, the order highlighted issues such as poor service, delays in deposits and withdrawals, cash limits exceeding the approved scope, and the improper application of interest rates and commissions.
“The state has virtually admitted to chronic problems in financial services,” the source said. “They tell people to increase savings, but when people try to withdraw money, they often stop them by making excuses. As this contradiction continues, people mistrust the banks and keep their money at home.”
State scrambles to save electronic payment expansion
“The Central Bank order to branches nationwide is being taken as a response to control public discontent with financial services and boost trust between the banks and the public,” the source said. “This is because if trust in financial services collapses, the state’s policy to expand electronic payments will also falter.”
The measure to expand trust in financial services is ultimately connected to the state’s strategy to expand electronic payments, the source said.
“That the state would respond to public discontent by providing even a direct phone number shows they think distrust of the financial system has reached a critical point,” the source said. “The state must feel a sense of crisis that if they are unable to deal with this distrust systematically, the entire financial system could collapse, including the expansion of electronic payments, which has undergone trials for the last five years of the Eighth Party Congress.”
Nam Jin-wook, associate research fellow at the Korea Development Institute’s Office of Global and North Korean Economic Studies, said North Korea’s emphasis on economic normalization and its attempt to expand electronic payments was “understandable from the position of the state, which operates the economy.” He said cash-based transactions “were hard to track and rarely led to investments, while use of cards and the financial system were useful for tracking the circulation of funds and managing prices and exchange rates.”
The problem was “policy continuity and public trust in the banks,” he said, adding that as long as a basic financial system that allowed people to freely withdraw their money was lacking, “mistrust was unlikely to diminish, even if they adopt systems or mechanisms for reporting complaints.”
“The state clearly intends to absorb foreign currency and enhance financial control by expanding electronic payments, but for this to succeed, above all else, they must recover basic trust with things such as ensuring people can withdraw savings and establishing rational commissions,” Nam said. “Even if North Korea can’t build an advanced financial system right away, financial policies can stably take root only when there are gradual improvements based on public trust.”
