Inter-Korean phone calls can keep the promises of the Sunshine Policy
Twenty years of state-to-state engagement between North and South Korea have not lived up to Kim Dae-Jung’s promises. Pyongyang has taken Seoul’s money, nuked up, and periodically attacked South Korea...
View ArticleNorth Korea: Dispatches from a class struggle
When you devote so substantial a part of your life to a topic as depressing as the humanitarian situation in North Korea, you have to find your rewards where you can. One small polemic reward of...
View ArticleRev. Tim Peters is feeding N. Korea’s hungry, and showing us how to re-think...
The Rev. Tim Peters, a man who embodies everything I admire about the word “Christian,” leads the group Helping Hands Korea, which has been helping North Koreans escape for more than a decade. Now,...
View ArticleSo far, sanctions are cutting off Pyongyang’s cash while sparing North...
A month after the President signed the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and two weeks after the U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 2270, enough information has emerged from North...
View ArticlePreparations for North Korea’s party congress spur anger, resistance, and...
Over the last year, this site has closely tracked growing signs that North Korea’s elites are discontented with Kim Jong-un’s leadership and fearful of being purged, and of falling morale and...
View ArticleA blanket trade embargo won’t help us disarm or reform North Korea
In Wednesday’s post, I wrote about Beyond Parallel’s imagery analysis pointing to a decline in cross-border trade between China and North Korea, along with the limitations of that analysis and its...
View ArticlePrisoners of the People: N. Korea’s guerrilla society has political...
Over the last year, I’ve become convinced that if technology can break the electronic barriers between North Korea and the Outer Earth, it would be possible to keep the broken promises of the Sunshine...
View ArticleNorth Korean market traders are fighting The Man
Via Yonhap: “It’s not that hard nowadays to see women stand up to despotic wardens and security agents while shaking their fingers at them at jangmadang,” the Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, citing a...
View ArticleClass struggle in North Korea
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and...
View ArticleOrganized crime enters North Korea’s markets
From the perspective of North Korea’s poor, the era of Kim Jong-un has been a time of increasing state control over information and borders, but also a time when the state has taken a relatively (by...
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How Kim Jong-un, China & the autumn gales set a death trap for North Korea’s...
By now, you’ve probably seen the ghastly reports of boats from North Korea washing up against the Japanese coastline with the desiccated or skeletal remains of their crews. You’ve probably also read...
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