Korea, North

When Kim Jong-il died in 2011, the world held its breath as North Korea entered uncharted waters. No other communist dictatorship in the last century – for that matter no…

The North Korean economy is changing – we know this because of widely reported growth of private markets since the famine of 1990s. But black markets and illicit activities are…

North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations Kim Song demanded that the United States release a North Korean vessel that is currently held by authorities in American Samoa, warning that…

It’s been nearly one year since the Singapore Summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un and the two countries are at an impasse. North Korea signals no intention of giving…

This is the first in a two part series looking at the entry of South and North Korea into the United Nations. The second part can be found here. September 17 marked the 30th anniversary of the entry of North Korea and South Korea into full membership in the United Nations.  In recommending admission of…

A few months ago, the New York Times reported that North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un, had called K-pop a ‘vicious cancer.’ Rather than see this pronouncement as an exceptional step taken by a totalitarian regime, one can think of this as yet another expression of an ongoing struggle to control information entering North Korea. In…

In the last two posts, we have provided data on the share of military personnel in the Politburo and analyzed in more detail the diversity of military backgrounds, some tied to the weapons program, but others linked more clearly to the military-industrial complex, technology and internal security. Here, we consider several intepretations of these developments,…

In a previous post, we provided data on the shifting composition of the Politburo, based on a classification of personnel into six different career paths: military, diplomatic, party, state, economic and provincial. We showed that since the failed Hanoi summit of 2018, the share of military personnel has returned to levels not seen since the…

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