North Korea

Much of the talk about how long the DPRK regime will last under sanctions and the country’s “self-isolation” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is rooted in the question of what role Beijing will play in supporting Pyongyang. In 2019, China accounted for about 95 per cent of North Korea’s total trade, according to the website North Korea in the World. According…

Throughout 2021, Pyongyang and Beijing continued to actively demonstrate their long-standing traditional friendship by exchanging messages and holding ceremonial events. On February 19, it was reported that Pyongyang appointed Ri Ryong-nam, a former vice-premier in charge of trade…

On October 24, 2021, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service stated that media reports about the North Korean leader’s sister committing a coup against her brother were fundamentally untrue. The primary source of the ‘hype’ is the October 23 report of the American tabloid magazine Globe about the coup d’etat in North Korea.  It turns out that Kim’s “ruthless…

In September 2021, North Korea surprised military experts by showcasing new technologies, while the fact that every single one of those techs exists even in the experimental form makes the US and their allies’ victory over Pyongyang increasingly difficult. First of all, the DPRK has developed its own cruise missile. Secondly…

Kim Jong-un keeps his word: the moratorium on nuclear tests and ICBM launches was a verbal statement. That never became a legal document, but it continues to be enforced. The same goes for promises to increase military capabilities: the leader’s speech on the subject set a number of ambitious targets. According to the Proceedings of the 8th Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party…

In the fall of 2021, news broke out that, in addition to developing a missile program, the DPRK restarted the Yongbyon reactor, its main nuclear facility, which was not operational from December 2018 to early July 2021. During the February 2019 summit in Hanoi, Kim Jong-un told Donald Trump that he was willing to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions that affect…

On September 11-12, North Korea successfully test-fired a new type of long-range cruise missile. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNADahJTkfw reported that the missiles “traveled for 7,580 seconds along an oval and pattern-8 flight orbits in the air above the territorial land and waters” in North Korea “and hit targets 1,500 km away,” and all design requirements were met. This was the third missile…

The South Korean media periodically publishes stories about how the North represses yet another group of teenagers.  The last such news story the author came across was from Korea Times: A group of Anju Middle School students, while on a Red Youth Guard internship, were spotted singing and dancing to a song by South Korean boy band BTS, “Blood, Sweat…

North Korea’s recent demonstration of an indigenously developed cruise missile has provided another opportunity for the United States to perform its own demonstration, one of its inexhaustible hypocrisy upon the global stage. It is also another opportunity to examine the real reason the US continues to maintain nearly 30,000 troops…

On August 15, 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory telegram to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Korea’s national holiday, Liberation Day. Putin’s telegram stated that Russia honors the memory of soldiers of the Red Army and the Korean patriots who gave their lives in the struggle for the freedom of Korea. The good traditions of friendship strengthened in those…

Amid the pause in DPRK-US relations and Kim Yo-jong’s June statement about Washington’s misguided expectations, there seemed to be no bright spots in inter-Korean relations before the end of the year. But the author was wrong: On July 27, 2021, South and North Korea reopened the communication hotlines that were shut…

There is a lot of writing about North Korean hackers, and every six months or a year the author makes a kind of summary, pointing out how the stories about the Pyongyang trail have become a self-replicating myth, and the expression “Hackers believed to be linked to North Korea” – a proof. Moreover, spring-summer 2021 turned out to be rich in high-profile events in this area…