Defectors and activists urge Canada to do more for North Korean asylum-seekers
Defectors from North Korea and activists who help them settle in South Korea and other countries have asked the Canadian government to more actively support...
Obstacles to divorce force couples to live double lives
An increasing number of couples in North Korea live separately without divorcing and, at the same time, younger couples are increasingly living together without marrying. ...
Defectors accuse South Korean politician opposing unification of being a spy
Like a surgeon who recommends a heart transplant, when a politician says South Korea should change its core national objective, people need to trust him...
Neighborhood watch units now expected to do police work
Police in North Korea are handing responsibility for local crime to neighborhood watch units. Untrained residents are even being held accountable for crimes in their...
Women forced into military service face increasing sexual abuse
After graduating from middle school in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province in 2019, Kwon (not her real name) enlisted in the Korean People's Army, determined to...
The logging company that functions like a labor camp
When Choi, 57, failed to turn up for work at the Pihyon Logging Company at the end of May, the work unit sent someone over...
Residents complain about Pyongyang’s fancy new apartments
It has been three years since people moved into their apartments in the futuristic 83-story Songhwa Street Main Tower in Pyongyang and they’re not happy. ...
New policy to bombard North Koreans with information could spark new wave of defections
Could South Korea’s new unification policy unleash a flood of defections and undermine the regime of Kim Jong-un? While some defectors are critical of the...
600 escapees repatriated from China are sentenced to life in the gulag
Six hundred North Korean escapees who were rounded up last year in China and forcibly repatriated have been given life sentences in political prison camps...
A virgin raped in a prison camp
We won’t say her full name, for reasons which will become obvious, but Choi was not really a defector. Nor was she caught by the...
Kim comes to the rescue of flood victims
Kim Jong-un personally directed rescue operations last weekend following severe flooding in the city of Sinuiju and Uiju county on the Chinese border, according to...
Russians promote weirdness of North Korea for tourism
When 200 young Russians arrived at Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport on Monday this week, they were excited to touch down in a strange and exotic place...
Do recent changes presage an imminent wave of mass defections?
The arrival in South Korea of a senior North Korean diplomat based in Cuba, which was confirmed earlier this month by Seoul’s intelligence agency, highlights...