Theorized about for a long time, now in the news:
“Currently there are eight companies in Seoul alone that provide services matching North Korean women with South Korean men. Two of them opened between 2005 and 2006 and the other six last year or this year. “It’s a niche market for South Korean men who [...]

“Kimjongilia” [김정일화] is a documentary the depicts why the defectors fled, describes their escapes, and recounts the dangers they faced in China, hunted by Chinese police as well as North Korean intelligence services.
The director, N.C. Heikin, felt she must do something to expose the human rights disaster that North Korea is after hearing of Kang [...]

An unusual defection directly to South Korea:
Four North Koreans defected to South Korea by sea this week and the authorities in the South are questioning them, Seoul’s intelligence agency said Wednesday… Yonhap, South Korea’s national news agency, reported that the defectors were a husband and wife, and their son and daughter-in-law. Yonhap, which [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Via AFP: “South Korea has lifted an overseas travel ban on Hwang Jang-Yop, the highest-ranking North Korean defector ever to come here and a harsh critic of the Pyongyang regime. . . Hwang, former secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party and an ex-tutor of Kim Jong-Il, defected during a trip to Beijing in 1997.” [...]

This post is continued from last July, when rumors or Kim Jong-il having heart surgery had (again) brought up the question of who would lead North Korea should he die. That post basically covered dynastic succession and focused on his three legitimate sons, Kim Jong-nam (김정남), Kim Jong-chol (김정철), and Kim Jong-eun (김정운), none of [...]

The Sejong Society will host a talk by Kim Dong-su, a North Korean defector who was the Second Secretary of the Permanent Representative of North Korea to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization when he defected to South Korea in 1998. Before his defection, he served in key posts in North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign [...]

From the Dong-a Ilbo: “President of the Families of Abducted and Detained in North Korea, confirmed yesterday at a press conference, ‘A former South Korean soldier surnamed Kim is currently staying in a third country. He crossed the North Korean border at around 10 p.m. on June 14. He joined the South Korean army in [...]

From the NY Sun: “Born and raised in Pyongyang, the site of the New York Philharmonic’s recent landmark concert, Mr. Kim, 33, spent two years attempting to flee his native country before arriving in South Korea in 2003. This was his debut performance in Manhattan.”