Korea, North

In this special episode of Korean Kontext, KEI's Juni Kim sat down with three North Korean defectors who have settled in South Korea. Each of them has a different story…

The upcoming presidential election in Korea on May 9th will place many key issues under the microscope. One meriting serious consideration that has featured less prominently in the political discourse…

After the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex last year, economic ties between North and South Korea have all but ceased. And as sanctions measures continue to tighten, the international…

Ever since last summer, when South Korea and the United States announced they would be deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to the peninsula, China…

North Korea was the first country to severely restrict travel and trade across its borders when the pandemic began in 2020. While the rest of the world has since largely returned to normal, many of North Korea’s COVID restrictions remained in place at the beginning of 2023. However, Pyongyang began to ease these constraints in…

North Korea and Russia took another step in advancing their close relationship in November. Officials from both sides participated in a meeting of the Committee for Cooperation in Trade, Economy, Science and Technology, which last met four years ago in 2019. The bilateral meeting, first established in 1991, comes as Pyongyang and Moscow have reinvigorated…

As the worst of the COVID pandemic begins to fade, North Korea’s weak health care system and its lack of wide-spread vaccinations against the disease are apparently now able to handle the return home of North Koreans who were away from their home country when the COVID pandemic initially broke out.  North Koreans were officially…

At the end of August, U.S. officials at the United Nations headquarters in New York and White House officials in Washington cited intelligence reports that Moscow was seeking weapons and ammunition from North Korea.  Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, stated that “Russia is negotiating potential deals…

Please join KEI for a discussion on North Korea’s potential incorporation of AI into its cyber arsenal.