Since 1980s the Academy has suffered from a long-term lack of funding, but it remains as a large and the most important scientific institution in the country.

Its first president was Hong Myng-hi who, according to Andrei Lankov, was not a skilled administrator and chosen for his political loyalty.

[8] By the late 1950s, the Soviet Union was giving practical training in nuclear research to institutions affiliated with the North Korean Academy of Sciences.

[9] In 1959, North Korea struck a deal with the Soviet Union on setting up a nuclear research facility under the Academy near Yongbyon.

[10] A parallel development in the late 1950s was the purging of intellectuals unfavorable to Kim Il Sung from the Academy in 1957.

[12] In the 1970s, a number of State Academy of Sciences institutes were moved from the Pyongyang to the city of Pyongsong, some 50 kilometres (31 mi) outside of the capital.

[15] Affiliated with the Academy, there are institutions dealing with various fields including mathematics and physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, law and economics, history, literature and philology, and ethnography and archaeology.

The North Korean government has plans to establish a special economic zone run by the Academy there.

[19] Pyongyang retains branches involved in the research of biology, construction and building materials, electronics and automation, and light industry.

[21] Since the 1980s, the Academy has suffered from the lack of funds,[5] and since the early 1990s, it and its personnel have experienced "a dramatic decline" in standing.