A South Korean defense expert says North Korea’s annual trade volume would increase nearly sixfold to 32 billion dollars in ten years if the North were to scrap its nuclear program and normalize relations with the United States.

Senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, Sung Chae-ki, made the statement in a thesis he contributed to the institute's quarterly journal on national defense policies.

The North’s trade volume amounted to five-point-six billion dollars last year.

Sung forecast that if the U.S. and the North normalize relations, their bilateral trade would expand 56 times to 950 million dollars, while South-North trade would jump nearly sixfold to stand at around ten billion dollars.