Why there is no Parents’ Day in North Korea
Wednesday is eobeoi (parents) day in South Korea, where it is a national holiday. Established on May 8, 1973, it is a time for people...
Change in North Korea as Kim Jong-un remodels Fortress Juche
The colossal ideological fortress of Juche has stood firm for a long time as the cornerstone of North Korea's pursuit of revolution and defense against...
Forced repatriation: Accountability
The last of our four-part series on the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors in China. For parts one, two, and three, see here, here...
By honoring defectors is South Korea unintentionally erecting a barrier to integration?
When I started English lessons again when I was 20, the first topic in the textbook was St. Patrick's Day in America. This celebration of...
Kim Jong-un rejects unification out of fear of South Korea
Like a wizard, Kim Jong-un waved his magic wand on March 23 and an entire organization vanished. The Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea,...
Why North Korean news media don’t report news
One day in Pyongyang, in the summer of 1993, I was walking along Tongil Street in the city’s Rangrang district, heading for a bus stop,...
Shouldn’t Kim Ju-ae be in school?
As Kim Jong-un intensifies the confrontation with South Korea, he appears to be raising the profile of his 11-year-old daughter, Ju-ae. Is he positioning her...
Kim’s saber-rattling looks like a prolonged childish tantrum
With Kim Jong-un now walking a path of military escalation, defense experts in South Korea and the United States are assessing the impact on their...
With her Mount Paektu bloodline, there is nothing preventing Kim Ju-ae being the next leader
The Korea Institute for National Unification, a government think tank in Seoul, has released a report saying that, considering the increased role of women within...
There’s ideology in those blue jeans
Everyone has at least one pair of jeans. They have the distinction of being ordinary and fashionable at the same time. The designer Yves Saint...
My mother, the Iron Lady
One of my most terrifying memories was the day the secret police ransacked our family’s house. Three men barged in and one of them barked...
Why North Koreans would vote for Trump if they could
With the US presidential election campaign picking up steam and, despite the controversy and legal issues swirling around him, Donald Trump might win in November....
Kim Il Sung-Kim Jong Il Fund, “Using the Dead to Exploit the Living”
The bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leaders who died in 1994 and 2011 respectively, are enshrined in the...
The Differing Views of North Korean Women on Human Rights Activism
Why is it that women who defect from North Korea and come straight to South Korea have a different attitude to human rights activism than...
Defectors Prefer a Preemptive Strike to Remove Kim Jong Un but Speaking Softly and Carrying a Big Stick is the Wiser Strategy
One of the options for dealing with North Korea’s military provocations is a preemptive strike, on military targets and/or on Kim Jong Un himself. Given what could go wrong, this is a scary idea, especially for those of us living close by in South Korea. It also appears somehow undemocratic or certainly unpeaceful for a democracy to even consider it. Furthermore, why advocate war in a situation where war has been avoided for 70 years?
North Korea’s Internal War Against South Korean Culture and Market Ideas May Be Unwinnable
As the generation of North Koreans who grew up familiar with the jangmadang market system enters adulthood, the state is cracking down harshly to prevent their “impure” attitudes and tastes – which include a preference for South Korean music and movies – from going mainstream.
Collecting Taxes in the Country of No Taxation
Back in June 2018, after watching news of the summit between Kim Jong Un and then-US President Donald J. Trump on TV, a friend in my hometown had a quirky suggestion.
Are North Koreans Becoming Aware of the Concept of Human Rights?
Growing up in North Korea, I was not familiar with “human rights.” It wasn’t that I was just unaware of what it meant. I didn’t even know the concept existed. I hadn’t heard the phrase. This was not just ignorance on my part or among my friends and family members. I’ve found since escaping North Korea that, with the exception of a few elite defectors, none of us knew. We all lived without knowing what human rights were.