The flourishing trade in North Korean artworks in China may be an unexpected target of stifling new economic sanctions aimed to stop Pyongyang’s rapidly progressing nuclear and missile programmes.

Thousands of North Korean artists have set up studios along their country’s border with northern China, feeding the burgeoning Chinese demand for their work, according to a Reuters investigation.

“Chinese have begun collecting art, and North Korean art is much easier and cheaper for them to obtain,” said Park Young-jeong, a research fellow at the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

But their trade may now be under threat because of the link between studios and the controversial state-controlled Mansudae gallery, North Korea’s largest producer of art.