Korea, North

For understandable reasons, the international community has been focused on North Korea's nuclear program, concerned that Pyongyang could have a weapon capable of such massive destruction. But should they also…

Last week, we looked at the details of the new US and UN sanctions against North Korea, delving into the new measures to get at Pyongyang's funding. But will they…

On February 18, President Barack Obama signed into law a new round of sanctions designed to further squeeze the North Korean regime. On March 3, the United Nations Security Council…

In the decades following the Korean War, North Korea initiated a top-secret project to kidnap ordinary people from Japan, reeducate them, and turn them into international spies for the regime.…

After more than two years since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 has finally been detected in North Korea. Despite strict border controls limiting the movement of people and goods to prevent entry of the novel coronavirus, state media reported on 12 May that the Omicron BA.2 variant had been found in a sample taken…

North Korean officials confirmed the first deaths in the country from COVID-19 on May 13, and the latest North Korean news media reports state that well over a million North Koreans are suffering “fever symptoms.” (See reports in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, CNN, Voice of America.) Kim Jong-un appeared…

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Council have begun the process of selecting a new Special Rapporteur to focus on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).  Special Rapporteur Tomás Ojea Quintana has held the mandate for DPRK human rights for the…

There is a long tradition of considering North Korean leaders’ public appearances as a potential source of information on the regime’s priorities (see for example: Haggard, Herman, and Ryu; Pyo and Hur; Kim and Lee).  We now have ten full years of this data for Kim Jong-un through the South Korea Ministry of Unification portal,…

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