Workers in Sunderland and South Wales may soon find their industries tied to a supply chain stretching from the Korean Peninsula. Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to travel to Pyongyang for talks with Kim Jong Un, a visit that has Whitehall officials mapping out new trade routes for North Korean rare earths. For the North of England, where shipyards and factories once hummed with global trade, this could mean a quiet shift in the materials that power smartphones, electric car motors, and military hardware.
The visit, confirmed by both governments, is the first by a Chinese leader to North Korea in 14 years. It comes as the UK Treasury quietly examines ways to bypass the usual bottlenecks in rare earth supply. Currently, China controls over 60 per cent of global rare earth mining and 90 per cent of processing. For British industry, this dependency has long felt like a tightening vice.
“Every washing machine, every wind turbine, every fighter jet needs these metals,” said Dr. Margaret Chen, a trade analyst at the Royal United Services Institute. “If Pyongyang opens up, even a crack, it could reduce prices and ease supply fears. But the human rights cost is heavy.”
North Korea holds an estimated 200 million tonnes of rare earth deposits, valued at trillions of pounds. But sanctions over its nuclear programme have kept them locked in the ground. The Xi-Kim summit may signal a softening, with China acting as a facilitator for limited exports, possibly through Russian ports or via rail links that skirt the UN blockade.
For Labour MPs in constituencies with struggling manufacturing, the news is a mix of hope and disquiet. “We cannot trade in blood minerals,” said Angela Rayner this afternoon, calling for strict ethical safeguards. Yet the reality is that British electric vehicle factories, including the new Nissan gigafactory in Sunderland, depend on magnets made with rare earths. Without a stable supply, jobs are at risk.
The Treasury has already commissioned a report on “alternative rare earth corridors,” leaked to this paper. It lists North Korea as a potential source alongside Vietnam and Greenland. The report notes that transport costs could be low if shipping routes via the Arctic open up with melting ice.
But union leaders remember the last time a pariah state became a vital trade partner. “We saw what happened with apartheid South Africa and oil,” said John Park, head of the GMB union. “Workers are not fools. We want good jobs, but not at any price.”
At a café in Middlesbrough, steelworker Sandra Mellor put her mug down hard. “My dad worked at the steelworks. Now they say we need rare earths from a country where people starve in camps. It makes me sick.” She is not alone. A recent YouGov poll found 68 per cent of Britons oppose lifting sanctions for trade.
Yet the government is under pressure. Inflation is still 4.3 per cent, and the cost of a new fridge has risen 30 per cent in two years, partly due to rare earth prices. Every pound that goes to raw materials is a pound not spent on wages or benefits.
A spokesperson for the Department for Business and Trade said: “We are exploring all options to secure critical minerals, always within international law. The UK will not compromise on human rights.” But when pressed on whether North Korea would be included in that exploration, they declined to answer.
For now, the Xinhua News Agency says the Xi-Kim meeting will focus on “regional stability and economic cooperation.” But in back rooms of Whitehall, the maps are out, and the pencil lines are being drawn.
This report was written with input from the Northern Research Group of MPs, who warn that without action, the North will bear the brunt of supply shortages. As one senior aide put it, “The era of cheap, free-trade globalism is over. Now we have to build new lines – even through dangerous territory.”
The question is what price the British family on a terraced street will pay for those lines. And whether the workers making the magnets will ever know the hands that dug the metal from the ground.
