Increasing Doubts about North Korea’s Huge Rare Earths Deposit

Australian Mining reported that a supposedly massive rare earths deposit discovered in North Korea in 2013 is being doubted. The deposit was discovered by a joint venture between SRE Minerals and state owned Korea Natural Resources Trading Company, with early reports stating that had the potential to hold reserves 6 times as large as those in China.

As quoted in the publication:

A group of thinktanks in South Korea have rejected the legitimacy of the deposit.

“The numbers are not backed up with any solid data, it is nothing but a list of what they have under the ground. [Schürmann] has absolutely no credibility. Whatever he says, I take it as hoax,” Choi Kyung-soo, a senior researcher at the North Korea Resource Institute told NK News.

“We do not have any data regarding this issue, and the article does not really give us the solid proof about amount of DPRK’s rare minerals nor how profitable it is,” a spokesperson from the Information Systems for Resource of North Korea added.

Australian-based geologist, Louis W. Schurmann, who worked on the deposit, has rebuffed those claims.

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