@article{ART003353916},
author={Dong Jun CHUN and Baek, Jun Kee},
title={Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case},
journal={Analyses & Alternatives},
issn={2508-822X},
year={2026},
volume={10},
number={2},
pages={5-42},
doi={10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001}
TY - JOUR
AU - Dong Jun CHUN
AU - Baek, Jun Kee
TI - Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case
JO - Analyses & Alternatives
PY - 2026
VL - 10
IS - 2
PB - Korea Consensus Institute
SP - 5
EP - 42
SN - 2508-822X
AB - International sanctions and pandemic-era border closures rarely affect cities evenly, yet within-country distributional effects remain difficult to measure when the targeted state publishes no reliable sub-national statistics. This paper addresses the gap using a relatively underused approach in Korean studies and political economy: a high-frequency satellite nighttime-lights (NTL) panel applied to North Korea. Drawing on NASA's daily Black Marble product over 2012–2025 for sixteen cities, the analysis detects 285 power-disruption (PD) and 577 flood-inducing rainfall (FL) events, then computes eight resilience metrics per event under a fixed pre-sanctions baseline.
City fixed-effects regressions compare resilience across three regimes (pre-sanctions 2012–2015, post-sanctions 2017–2019, post-COVID 2020–2025); inference is reported conservatively via exact-enumeration wild cluster bootstrap (WCB) over all 2⁴ = 16 sign patterns with G = 4 metropolitan clusters, alongside leave-one-cluster-out checks. Four findings emerge. First, a substantial capital-protection contrast in PD frequency: the Pyongyang-metropolitan cluster records 0.69 PD episodes per city-year against 2.49 in the east-inland cluster — a 3.6-fold rate gap that holds across alternative comparator schemes (illustratively, 17 events in the four most-protected core cities against 96 in the two most-exposed inland-border cities). Second, NTL responses to flood-inducing rainfall became larger during the post-sanctions period (impact +0.109, scarring +0.188), consistent with — though without direct infrastructure observation of — weakened drainage or response capacity. Third, NTL impacts of both event types contract under post-COVID conditions (PD impact −0.061; FL impact −0.318), which the analysis interprets primarily as reduced measured urban activity rather than improved resilience. Fourth, an exploratory heterogeneous-treatment pattern (HC3-based, not validated under WCB) suggests that politically protected, low-exposure cities show larger post-COVID PD impacts than high-exposure cities (interaction +0.073), consistent with prior sanctions-era adaptation among the latter; this pattern warrants further investigation. The paper also illustrates how daily satellite NTL, when combined with transparent event definitions and panel-based robustness checks, can supplement conventional sources of evidence in opaque-state political-economy research.
KW - international sanctions;nighttime lights;North Korea;political geography;urban resilience
DO - 10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
ER -
Dong Jun CHUN and Baek, Jun Kee. (2026). Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case. Analyses & Alternatives, 10(2), 5-42.
Dong Jun CHUN and Baek, Jun Kee. 2026, "Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case", Analyses & Alternatives, vol.10, no.2 pp.5-42. Available from: doi:10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
Dong Jun CHUN, Baek, Jun Kee "Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case" Analyses & Alternatives 10.2 pp.5-42 (2026) : 5.
Dong Jun CHUN, Baek, Jun Kee. Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case. 2026; 10(2), 5-42. Available from: doi:10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
Dong Jun CHUN and Baek, Jun Kee. "Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case" Analyses & Alternatives 10, no.2 (2026) : 5-42.doi: 10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
Dong Jun CHUN; Baek, Jun Kee. Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case. Analyses & Alternatives, 10(2), 5-42. doi: 10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
Dong Jun CHUN; Baek, Jun Kee. Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case. Analyses & Alternatives. 2026; 10(2) 5-42. doi: 10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
Dong Jun CHUN, Baek, Jun Kee. Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case. 2026; 10(2), 5-42. Available from: doi:10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
Dong Jun CHUN and Baek, Jun Kee. "Satellite Nighttime Lights and Urban Resilience under Sanctions: A North Korean Case" Analyses & Alternatives 10, no.2 (2026) : 5-42.doi: 10.22931/aanda.2026.10.2.001
