North Korea

Once seen as an opportunity for investors to position themselves for a future North Korean turnaround, the country's rarely traded defaulted debt may move further into the twilight zone after new sanctions were imposed this week on Pyongyang, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Debt from North Korea - probably the most isolated of the frontier markets - has already been frozen for years as the secretive nation faces the most stringent sanctions regime in the world.

South Korean companies operating at a joint industrial estate in North Korea have said they face bankruptcy in many cases because of icy cross-border relations, Agence France-Presse reported. In a joint statement they demanded that the South Korean government improve ties with the North so that the Kaesong estate can run normally. The factory bosses also demanded that the communist North withdraw "unilateral and unacceptable" wage and rent demands, ease restrictions on border crossings and guarantee the safety of South Koreans working there.