North Korea

North Korea Citizenship

North Korea operates no residency or citizenship by investment program.

UN Security Council sanctions, alongside national measures in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, restrict investment, trade and financial dealings with the country.

The legal and commercial environment offers no transparency or predictability, and foreign investors have no mechanism through which to acquire status.

North Korea Citizenship by Investment

North Korea does not offer citizenship by investment, and North Korean nationals are excluded from effectively every program abroad.

St Kitts and Nevis and Grenada both bar DPRK nationals outright.

Turkey lists North Korea among its restricted nationalities. Sanctions compliance and the impossibility of conducting meaningful due diligence rule out the remainder in practice.

Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda operate narrow conditional provisions rather than absolute bans.

Either will consider an application only where the applicant has not lived in North Korea for at least ten years, holds no substantial assets there, and has conducted no business with or within the country.

In practice these provisions apply to a small number of long-resettled individuals rather than to anyone departing the country now.

North Korean defectors resettled in South Korea acquire South Korean citizenship, and apply to programs as South Korean nationals rather than DPRK ones.

This changes the position entirely: the South Korean passport ranks 4th on the La Vida Passport Value Index, reaching 214 of 227 destinations, 99.5% of world GDP and 99.2% of global travel.

North Korea Residency by Investment

North Korea does not offer residency by investment.

No European or Caribbean residency program is open to DPRK nationals, and sanctions compliance obligations on banks, law firms and licensed agents prevent processing at every stage of an application.

North Korea ranks 175th of 199 on the La Vida Passport Value Index. The DPRK passport reaches 88 of the world’s 227 destinations without a prior visa, representing 9.6% of world GDP and 16.3% of global travel measured by international visitor arrivals.

Those figures overstate practical mobility by a considerable margin.

Exit from North Korea requires state permission that is granted to a small number of officials, delegates and approved workers, so the theoretical destination count has little bearing on what an ordinary passport holder can do.

North Korean nationals require advance visas for the United States, the United Kingdom, the Schengen Area, Japan and South Korea.

Citizenship and Residency by Investment Programs

See below a selection of countries offering residency and citizenship investment programs.

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