Workers’ Party Directive Instructs Diplomats to Gain Chinese Recognition of North Korea as a Nuclear Power
With its confidence boosted by recently strengthened ties with Russia, North Korea is setting its sights on recognition by China of its status as a nuclear power.
A Gift of Rice for Lunar New Year: Propaganda versus Reality
For Lunar New Year, which falls this year on Saturday, February 10, the recently established grain sales centers (which replaced the old distribution centers), were authorized to sell 3 kilograms of rice to each household. Officials characterized this as a thoughtful gesture by the Workers’ Party. But our impression from sources in North Korea is that citizens increasingly see such things as impractical propaganda.
“Music Politics” Shows the Changing View of Women in North Korea
In recent years, the changing role of women in North Korean society, brought on by the famine of the 1990s, has become apparent through the...
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.
Latest Study Guides for Ideological Indoctrination
The ruling Workers’ Party produced its annual Study Guide last month, which provides a rare window into political indoctrination and the devotion with which everyone from top officials to ordinary workers is expected to approach it.
Foreign Currency is Now the Key to North Korea’s Survival
Despite being closed off from the world, politically and economically, North Korea cannot survive without foreign currency. This, of course, applies to some degree to all countries in the international trading system. But ever since the 1994-1998 famine – which North Koreans refer to as the ‘Arduous March’ – foreign currency earning in the country has taken on a unique character. Not only has it become the key to the country’s continued survival. But the system itself that depends on it can no longer be considered normal.