DPRK
North Korea News Today
A North Korean Defector Wants to Return to the DPRK? Strange But True
While most stories focus on how awful a place the DPRK is, oddly, there are some cases of refugees from the DPRK who want to return to North Korea. Due to a myriad of reasons, from missing family in the North to failure to integrate successfully into South Korean society, a very few North Koreans […]
Read More
Documentary
The Turkmenbashi Cult of Personality in Turkmenistan
With a personality cult to rival that of Kim Jong-un’s in North Korea, Turkmenistan’s Turkmenbashi has built a comprehensive system of secular adulation centered on his life and his teachings as embodied in his various proclamations, speeches, and writings, most famous among which is the Ruhnama. Having elevated himself to the position of secular god […]
Read More
North Korea News Today
Dennis Rodman Loves Traveling to North Korea
An apparently chummy relationship between Kim Jong-un and Dennis Rodman deepens as the controversial former NBA basketball player travels again to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to visit Pyongyang and take in the sites in one of east Asia’s most brutal dictatorships. Apparently either ignorant of the human rights situation in North Korea […]
Read More
News
The Purge of Jang Song-thaek: Kim Jong-un Consolidates His Power As Top Officials Purged in Largest State Show Trials Since Kim Il Sung’s Purge of the Domestic Faction in 1955
- December 25, 2013
- China
- Choe Ryong-hae. methamphetamine
- Democratic People's Republic of Korea
- DPRK
- Economics
- Economy
- Jang Song Thaek
- Kim Dynasty
- Kim Il-sung
- Kim Jong-il
- Kim Jong-Un
- Kim Kyong-hui
- Kim Won-hong
- Korea
- Nam Jae-joon
- North Korea
- Paektu line
- People's Republic of China
- PRC
- purge
- South Korea
- South Korea National Intelligence Service
- trade
Possible turmoil in the DPRK as reports are swirling about the execution of Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong Un’s uncle and nominal second-in-command of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. A full-scale purge is believed to be underway as thirty-year-old Kim Jong Un seeks to eliminate factionalism within North Korea to consolidate his nascent rule […]
Read More
News
Kim Jong Un Attempts to Project Unity During Kim Jong Il Memorial
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attempted to project an image of unity in the wake of his uncle and nominal DPRK second-in-command Jang Song Thaek’s execution following a laundry list of charges against him including such dubious charges as moral dissipation to plotting to overthrow the regime in Pyongyang and disrupt the “monolithic operation […]
Read More
North Korea News Today
Sports
Champion Weight Lifter Hailed In Pyongyang With South Korean National Anthem
An international weight lifting competition in North Korea, unusual in and of itself, was further transformed into a peculiar spectacle when a champion weight lifter from South Korea stood atop the winner’s podium as the national anthem of the Republic of Korea was played in the heart of the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic […]
Read More
North Korea News Today
Arcade Games Arrive in North Korea
Changes in the DPRK are slow to come but there are a few small glimmers of hope that the despotic regime will be slightly less despotic under leader Kim Jong-un: namely, reports of an arcade in Pyongyang are discordant with images the regime has painted of itself in the past. Under Kim Jong-il, the current […]
Read More
Documentary
VICE Returns to the DPRK: The Hermit Kingdom
The controversial VICE documentary on the DPRK, The Hermit Kingdom, features everyone from Dennis Rodman to Kim Jong-un himself. If ever the phrase about truth being stranger than fiction needed proof of its validity, it has found it in this documentary. What might escape the untrained eye, however, and proves to be of great interest […]
Read More