The Taepo Dong 2 (TD-2) (대포동 2호) missile launch(es) North Korea likely is preparing for, and recent voiding of all political-military deals with South Korea, are part of Pyongyang’s long-term strategy of regime survival. While these actions also have less important near-terms goals – expressing displeasure with ROK President Lee Myung-bak’s relatively hard-line approach [...]

“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 [...]

Via UPI: “A recent U.S. National Intelligence Commission report claiming that 1990s famines in the North have rendered many potential soldiers born during the period with “cognitive deficiencies” drew an angry official response from [the KCNA] Saturday… ‘They floated the cock-and-bull story… it is an open secret that the ill-famed intelligence and plot-breeding institutions of [...]

In 1999 the news on North Korea was both alarmist over North Korean antics and naively hopeful of peace suddenly breaking out. A decade later the news is still often alarmist - North Korea did test a nuclear device in 2006 after all - but less naive after decade of reneging on agreements and [...]

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 [...]

Otherwise known as “food.” From BBC News:
North Korean scientists have developed a new kind of noodle that delays feelings of hunger, a Japan-based pro-Pyongyang newspaper has reported.
[…]
They left people feeling fuller longer and represented a technological breakthrough, the newspaper said.
[…]
“When you consume ordinary noodles (made from wheat or corn), you may soon feel your [...]

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 TimesOnline: “THE first case of murder and suicide caused by North Korea’s new food crisis has emerged with the account of a man who killed his hungry wife and children and then took his own life in despair.” This report can’t be confirmed, but it is entirely plausible.

LA Times staff writer Barbara Demick has been covering North Korea for several years. Her latest article is brief but a must read: “Within hours after our plane left, the lights went out. The cellphone kiosk closed down and the broadband was disconnected. Pyongyang looked again like what it really is: the capital of the [...]

Apparently, South Korean rice meant to ease the suffering of North Korean civilians was