A bit dated, but Yoelchae’s write up on his trip to Kaesong in October is well worth the read.

New additions are: Andrei Lankov’s blog (translated version via DPRK Forum); Saber Fencer; The Grand Narrative; Korea in Focus; KoreaArticle, and; Information Dissemination.

Via CNN: “An Iranian woman, blinded by a jilted stalker who threw acid in her face, has persuaded a court to sentence him to be blinded with acid himself under Islamic law demanding an eye for an eye… Her attacker… admitted throwing acid in her face in November 2004.”

French doctors have been treating North Korean elite – to include Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il – since the early 1990s. Rumors of European physicians treating the Kim Jong-il have been around for years, but the bizarre details were bound to surface sooner or later; here are a few (h/t PS) [original text in French, [...]

Remember the mad protests about American beef in South Korea? The mass hysteria of biblical proportions (”cats and dogs living together!”) that gripped the country and led to its otherwise sensible president to apologize regarding the “hurried” negotiation over resumption of the importation of American beef?
Well, now, apparently, American beef is welcome in ROK again:
Now, [...]

The trouble with North Korea is that nobody wants it — except the current ruling elite of North Korea itself.
In a previous post, I rather immodestly predicted that, should the Kim regime collapse in North Korea, a military junta backed by China would emerge, resulting in a Burma-ization of North Korea. I further speculated that [...]

There was a time when German soldiery was feared for its vaunted combat effectiveness. The Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, who later achieved immortality as the prophet of military transformation (The Transformation of War) made his early reputation as a combat historian with an insightful comparative study of WWII German and American combat effectiveness [...]

On the one hand, there was the North Korean defector-turned-anti-North Korea-activist, trying to send balloons with anti-Kim Jong-Il messages. On the other side were pro-North demonstrators (from the labor unions) trying to stop him. The result was, at least according to the WaPo, a brawl (make sure to watch the video attached to the article):
“You [...]

Kim Hyun-hee, one of the infamous bombers of Korean Air (KAL) 858 in 1987 which killed 115 (see book review, The Tears of My Soul), claims that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), during the first year of Roh Moo-hyun’s administration, pressured her to recant that the bombing was directed by North Korea. When she [...]