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Tue, June 19, 2018 | 13:29

Opinion > Columnists > Andrei Lankov >

A sad comedy of errors

After a few months of relative tranquillity and malign neglect, North Korea has once again found itself in the international spotlight. As usual, the reasons are not pleasant: hackers, believed to be on the payroll of the North Korean government, broke into the poorly protected computer system at Sony Pictures and obtained a great deal of damaging material.

2014-12-28 17:06

Young soldiers of the supreme leader

One of the most interesting features that a foreign visitor is bound to encounter when they are in North Korea is the sight of children going to school with a peculiar red scarf.

2014-12-14 17:03

1st cautious step on a slippery slope

Things are beginning to change in North Korea - or so it seems. For decades, the world has expected that, sooner or later, North Korea would emulate the remarkable success story of China. It was assumed that eventually the North Korean government would start switching to a market economy, while still keeping its Juche rhetoric and authoritarianism. For a long time, optimists were disappointed. Reforms, seemingly long overdue, have not happened for decades. There was good reason for the North Korean government's unwillingness to embrace reform: in a divided country such moves are likely to be...

2014-11-30 16:55

The rich and poor in North Korea

There are lots of cliches used to describe North Korea, one of the most common is that this place is a “a destitute country where the common people starve and the rulers live in unimaginable luxury.” Both parts of this description are wrong. To start with, it is true that the average North Korean lives in great poverty, and is frequently malnourished. Death from starvation is not a great threat any more however.

2014-11-16 17:08

Attempts to 're-creat' past

North Korea is an extremely nationalistic place. As was the case in most communist states, as time went by, nationalism gradually and quietly replaced revolutionary internationalism as its de facto ideology - though internationalist slogans are occasionally repeated and used when it suits the foreign policy goals of the country. However, nationalism, at least in its modern variety, is deeply connected with history. An old joke, probably invented in the early 1900s when nationalism reigned supreme in Europe, said that kids only had to be taught two subjects in primary school: military trainin...

2014-11-02 16:56

TV takes boredom to new level

In October 2010, the world media reported that something unusual had happened in North Korea: the main (and for most North Koreans the only) TV channel had shown a British movie on prime time. This movie was none "Bend it like Beckham," a light-hearted comedy about an Indian girl who wants to play football.

2014-10-05 17:11

An alien-free country

According to South Korean statistics, 1.6 million foreigners reside in South Korea (almost 3 percent of the country's total population). But what about South Korea’s northern neighbor? How many foreigners reside permanently in North Korea? We are not talking here about foreign embassy staff or international relief agency staff. They are a relatively small group that, together with their families, number less than 1,000. Additionally, this group is composed of individuals who usually only spend a few months or few years inside the country before leaving. They also seldom speak Korean and are ...

2014-09-21 17:03

Recently former Assemblyman Lee Seok-gi got a 12-year prison sentence (reduced to nine years) for an attempt to create an armed underground group to assist North Korea in the event of a major war. This is another reminder that North Korea, however bizarre it may appear to most observers, still has a small fan club in the democratic South. Lee was an open admirer of North Korea, a member of the radical Left Unified Progressive Party.

2014-08-24 17:05

A bit of extra weight ...

Everybody who has seen more than a few North Korean movies will know that North Korea's actors and actresses are a bit plump by present-day Western cinema standards. This is not to say that they are obese, but they clearly have a certain excess of body fat when compared to modern Western celebrities.

2014-08-10 17:11

Successive personality cult

As all our readers are aware, North Korea is frequently described as the world’s only communist monarchy and it is indeed an absolute monarchy in all but name - as the relatively recent succession of Kim Jong-un has once again confirmed. However, when in the late 1970s policy analysts first heard rumors that Kim Il-sung (the country’s founding father) had decided to promote his son Kim Jong-il as his successor, most observers were surprised and suspicious.

2014-07-27 17:03

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Daily life in North Korea