More and more North Korean youth are dodging mandatory military service, because ruling party membership and all its perks are no longer as automatic for those who finish lengthy stints in the armed forces, sources in the country told RFA
In Worth Less Than an Animal: Abuses and Due Process Violations in Pretrial Detention in North Korea, Lim Ok Kyung, one of the former detainees, described extremely harsh conditions when she was arrested in 2014 for having appliances smuggled from China in her house
North Korea has arrested 20 “phone brokers” who arrange calls and money transfers from outside the country in a nationwide crackdown on illegal mobile phone users, sources familiar with the cases told RFA
The Gamov Peninsula is an isolated region in Russia’s Far East , with influences from neighboring Japan, China, and North and South Korea. But the hardy few who live there cherish their solitude and are glad to be off the authorities’ radar
The halt in trade since January between the northeast Asian neighbors has had a crippling effect on North Korea’s economy, already struggling under years of U.S. and UN sanctions imposed to deprive Pyongyang of resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs
The Korea Institute for National Unification revealed in its ‘White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea in 2020’ that, released on May 11, that even after Kim Jong Un took office as the chairman of the State Council, public executions have continued
With food security and malnutrition already a serious problem under normal conditions in North Korea, the government appears to be showing no tolerance for those who would use the crisis as an opportunity to boost prices
Horses have great symbolic power in North Korean mythology and political culture, culminating in Chollima, a mythical winged horse that has inspired statues in the country’s cities and appeared on currency and postage stamps
A vast transportation lockdown meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus in China is forcing many North Korean refugees to suspend their escape to freedom. That is leaving many would-be defectors stranded in a country that has long sent them back home to certain punishment. The development comes as the number of North Korean defectors to South Korea has already dramatically slowed
Reports of cancer, infertility, and birth defects in the mining area of Tongam village are consistent with medical understandings that these things result from exposure to radiation