Inside North Korea
Problems of Nuclear Development Factor Analysis Methods and Proposal of Alternatives
김정은과 카다피의 핵개발: 기존 핵확산 요인분석틀의 한계 및 대안모델 제시
Bolstered by his backers in Beijing and Moscow—where Putin is closer to him than ever—Kim Jong Un is looking to stage an attack and prepping for nuclear war.
Kim Yo Jong is becoming the dynasty's voice of authority as intel reports claim her brother is spiraling into dependency on booze, sleeping pills, imported cheeses.
BLOOD RIVALRY North Korea's aggressive publicity campaign for Kim Jong Un's 10-year-old daughter could be bad news for the dictator's notorious sister.
NEXT BIG THING After watching Vladimir Putin's threats to use tactical nuclear missile strikes in Ukraine, Kim Jong Un has switched focus and could have his own ready to test within days.
SUCCESSION Kim Jong Un's little sister has been considered a frontrunner to become the next supreme ruler, but there's a new challenger on the scene: Kim's preteen daughter.
WEAPON OF CHOICE The real danger isn't North Korea's nuclear weapons.
While the spectre of nuclear war hangs over the region, other flashpoints may explode first, drawing in not just South Korea but also Japan, China and even Russia
Any dream of North Korean denuclearisation remains a fantasy but another round of negotiations would at least be better than war
Asia correspondent Donald Kirk discusses the latest in the long-standing tensions between North and South Korea.
NOT THE TIME North Korea has chimed in with its own unhinged response to Russia's war in Ukraine for the first time.
The White House knows it can't afford to fight Russia and China at the same time, and so does Kim—who is seizing the chance to make trouble.
North Korean authorities have embarked on a nationwide manure publicity campaign in light of a dire fertilizer shortage across the country.
Kim's purge began with the murder of his father's most trusted aides. The killing spree continues to consolidate power, but after 10 years in office his people are starving.
BLACK SHEEP
The Supreme Leader's older half-brother, who has been spotted at several Eric Clapton concerts over the years, could succeed Kim Jong Un. But he's not exactly dictator material.
The US is considering a 'no first use' policy, when states are seeking to modernise their nuclear arsenals
Rather than demanding that North Korea alone get rid of its nukes, global denuclearisation should be on the agenda
The message was so bizarre that some believed it must be a hoax, but sources told The Daily Beast that Queen Elizabeth really did send the note to the head of a rogue regime.
EXCLUSIVE
In his last phone interview before cops raided his home and confiscated his cell, Park Sang-Hak discusses how he single-handedly sparked another rift between the North and South.
Whispers of a new North Korean missile test continue to grow as Pyongyang torpedoes Secretary of State Antony Blinken's effort to reset the Korean dialogue during Seoul visit.
Two former presidents have visited North Korea after leaving office. Will Trump be next?
North Korea's report on its COVID-19 crisis suggests the need to reinforce Kim's leadership at a time when confidence in his ability to control the pandemic is in doubt.
As North Korean troops occupy in force sites that were supposed to represent peace and reconciliation, it's Kim Yo Jong who's leading the rhetorical charge.
It's been more than two weeks since North Korea's leader was seen in public. He has missed major events, and questions about his health are growing. But this is not the first time.
Younger sister Kim Yo Jong looks like the understudy waiting in the wings. But if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dies, it's fair to say all hell could break loose.
She's been the rising political star in a dynasty where other would-be heirs to the dynasty wound up dead.
Like her brother, Kim Yo Jong has cultivated a special relationship with President Donald Trump but has given up nothing on the nuclear and missile issues.
As new working level talks loom, Bolton was right to worry. But Kim Jong Un hated him. So will Kim have a vote on the next national security adviser? (He hates Pompeo.)
A rare North Korean parliament session ended without the announcement of major economic policy changes that many outside experts had predicted.
Panelists talked about the Obama administration's expansion of sanctions against North Korea and the freezing of assets of individuals and organizations linked to its nuclear program. They focused on human rights issues in North Korea. They also responded to questions from the audience.
No one has claimed credit for the raid that seized a trove of intel just before the Trump-Kim summit. CIA? North Korean exiles? Rogue South Korean spooks? Or all of the above?
ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS
"We're in positive momentum right now. We're going to maintain that," said a U.S. general in Korea after some GI remains were returned on Friday. But where does that momentum lead?
The Associated Press takes unkindly to aspersions cast on its non-coverage of "human rights" abuses from the vantage of its "bureau" in Pyongyang. Check out this critique on "38 North."
And then there's this article by NK News on foreign news agencies' mixed record in Pyongyang.
https://www.nknews.org/share/532fc1ca
By Donald Kirk
The skyline and traffic patterns of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang were not quite the same during my most recent visit in July as when I was last there four years earlier.
The North Korean void never ceases to startle.
Photography by Don Kirk
View of recently opened high-rise apartment blocks.
While portentous power maneuvers go on in the ruling circles of Pyongyang, you hear far less about them in North Korea than in South Korea. You do, however, get the impression of a regime that’s mired in the past while uneasily facing the future. So it was for me over 12 days in July on what was my ninth visit in 20 years to the world’s most isolated state.
During the dark days of Soviet rule, the inner workings of the regime in Moscow were anything but transparent. Scholars and journalists had to rely on Kremlin watching, studying every statement and deed of government officials in an attempt to divine meaning. It was an inexact science, but in the Soviet era Kremlin watchers could at least watch the Kremlin. In North Korea today, it's nearly impossible even to discover where the government and its new leader, Kim Jong Un, operate.
A visitor to North Korea finds more signs of modernization in Pyongyang as Kim Jong-un consolidates power. But it's hard to tell if reform is afoot in a country that remains deeply impoverished and isolated.
By Donald Kirk, Correspondent / August 1, 2012
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA
A sense of incipient change is in the air here as North Korea's traditional rhetoric about nuclear war contrasts with signs of a desire to reform a society that remains dangerously impoverished, underfed, and undeveloped.
True, over the past few years, Pyongyang has shown signs of modernizing: Eight or nine glistening high-rise apartment buildings form a new skyline in the heart of the capital, and a concert hall opened last month featuring the Pyongyang Symphony Orchestra performing compositions in praise of new leader Kim Jong-un; his grandfather, Kim Il-sung; and his father, Kim Jong-il. Traffic lights are replacing the legendary traffic ladies at key intersections, and taxis with checker designs on the front doors line up outside hotels and restaurants.
Together with visits from high-profile foreigners, the impression is that of a gradual opening, at least for a sliver of the city's elite.
Such signs, however, belie a longstanding commitment to the policy of juche, meaning self-reliance, and, more important, songun, or "military first." The result has been the deification of the Kim dynasty in a system in which the military has held sway while the economy has plunged ever deeper into an abyss of widespread hunger, disease, and neglect.
Hamhung, North Korea's largest industrial center, was opened to foreigners just two years ago. There's no hiding the poverty in the region.HAMHUNG, NORTH KOREA
Our omnipresent guide advises, "This city is not used to foreigners, so please: no pictures."
The quiet streets of Hamhung, North Korea, carry few vehicles. There’s no hiding the poverty of a region where oxen pull carts and most people ride bicycles.
That peremptory order introduces us to North Korea's biggest industrial center, a dreary city of 800,000 near the eastern coast about 100 miles northeast of Pyongyang.
It's not certain, however, if the sensitivity reflects chagrin over the decrepit apartment blocks and the graying industrial zone or concerns about how the locals, who have rarely seen foreigners, will respond.
"This city was opened just two years ago," the guide says, and it's believed to harbor many tales of poverty and starvation from the darkest days of the 1990s famine when 2 million people died throughout the country.
By Donald Kirk
MT. KUMKANG, North Korea ― An air of desolation hangs over this fabled resort area four years after a North Korean soldier shot and killed a middle-aged South Korean woman who had made the fatal mistake of wandering outside the tourist route to look at the sunrise over the East Sea.
The great square where hordes of South Korean tourists once gathered excitedly to look at the thriving shops, snack in the cafes and enter the domed theater for a performance by North Korean acrobats is almost deserted.
Dozens of buses rest empty and unused in a nearby parking lot. Tourists arrive in small groups from China, but they don't begin to fill the void left by the killing of a woman who your North Korean guide insists had ignored a warning shot while wandering close to a North Korean military installation.
Nothing, however, can disturb the unparalleled majesty of the soaring granitic peaks and spires of Mt. Kumkang, looming beyond the shopping area, as inviting now as it ever was. In fact, a visitor, arriving on a carefully monitored tour from Pyongyang, finds the hike up to the Kuryong waterfalls more appealing than ever if only because almost no one beside the few others in the group, not to mention the omnipresent minders, are competing for space on the trail.
By DONALD KIRK
PYONGYANG
One of the miracles here is the skill with which authorities control and shield not only their own people but foreign visitors.
At any of the two or three luxury hotels in the North Korean capital, you can eat, drink, buy souvenirs and look forward to another day of gazing on monuments, traipsing through museums and seeing pictures of such sights as the Pueblo, the U.S. Navy surveillance vessel captured off the east coast in 1968 and moored in the Taedong River in the North Korean capital as a museum.
You won't, however, get to meet, much less interview, a soul other than the very few whom your guides - we call them minders - want you to see. And you won't photograph anything those mysterious rule-makers deem embarrassing. In fact, while portentous power maneuvers are no doubt going on, you hear far less about them here than in South Korea.