Following Kim Jong-un’s visit to Russia, perhaps hundreds of articles have been written in the Western and South Korean press, and dozens of experts have given their opinions. In this author’s view, the reactions have been quite revealing, and they can be categorized in several ways. The first category largely corresponds to the official reaction of the West and the ROK.  Despite the fact that there is still no sign of manifestation of the arms deal reached between North Korea and Russia, Washington and Seoul issued a series of condemnatory statements and began discussing what measures should be taken on this matter. Let’s start with reactions…

On the evening of September 19, 2023, Kim Jong-un’s special train arrived in Pyongyang. Now that the visit is over, it is possible to finally summarize the agreements and answer “frequently asked questions” despite the fact that there was no final statement summarizing the results of the visit, and this was planned from the beginning. Next. On September 12, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “being neighbors, our countries cooperate in sensitive areas, which should not become the subject of any public disclosure…

Kim Jong-un’s visit turned out to be the DPRK leader’s longest trip outside the country. Although Vladimir Putin left for Moscow after the summit, Kim continued his trip around Primorye, combining pleasant and useful. The previous article ended with Kim’s arrival in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The DPRK leader was met at the railway station by the Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Alexander Kozlov, the Governor of Khabarovsk Krai Mikhail Degtyarev and the head of Komsomolsk-on-Amur Alexander Zhornik. Mikhail Degtyarev showed…

Rumors about the visit of the DPRK president of the State Affairs to the Russian Federation had been circulating before the announced visit, but in the author’s opinion, there is no correlation between these rumors and what happened afterwards. On September 4, the New York Times, citing unnamed “American and allied officials”, reported that Kim Jong-un may soon travel to Russia to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible arms deal. North Korea is seeking advanced technology…

On August 21, 2023 the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un publicly reprimanded the Prime MinisterKim Tok-hun for his irresponsibility in failing to prevent the harm caused to the country’s agricultural land by the recent Typhoon Khanun. Kim’s comments came as he directed flood recovery work at the Ansok salt marshes in South Pyongan Province. The Great Leader’s personal visit was a response to an emergency: a dam burst, causing a large area of poorly drained land, including rice paddies, to be flooded with seawater…

Kim Jong-un’s visit to Russia is still ongoing as the author is writing these lines, yet the audience urges him (the author, not Kim) not to put off dissecting the event’s most important moments and results. The visit of the DPRK leader to the Russian Federation will therefore be covered in several parts. He (still the author) will need to discuss the misleading news that circulated prior to the visit and how it was received in South Korea, at the very least. He will also go into more detail on what was planned for the visit and what, contrary to expectations, most likely wasn’t…

North Korean opponents have continued to focus on the subject of human rights in the second half of 2023. Let’s say that this is a very convenient claim to make since it, on the one hand, earns support from the populace and, on the other hand, has some merit because of the regime’s idiosyncrasies and the fact that it is operating under a state of emergency that necessitates extraordinary measures. As seen by the events in Yugoslavia, Libya, and other nations, using the concept of “human rights” to attack the regime and prepare the public for “humanitarian bombing” is effective…

The military parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War was a solemn event in and of itself, with columns marching to represent the KPA units that had distinguished themselves most during the 1950–53 battles and other branches of the military at the time, from railroad workers who were able to maintain the transportation network in the face of total US air supremacy to young guerrillas or counterintelligence forces. In addition, the parade began with an analog of Russia’s…

On July 22, 2023, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Gen. Mark Milley informed the Japanese daily Nikkei that “the Korean situation is an area that the United States could ― I’m not saying it will, but ‘could’ ― find itself in a state of war, you know, within a few days, with very little notice.” Milley then described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as unpredictable, claiming that a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile may strike the US mainland. Milley’s objective, according to South Korean experts, was undoubtedly to stress Washington’s commitment to maintaining peace and security on the peninsula, but he could have been more careful in his choice of words. According to Park Won-gon, professor in North…

In the second half of June 2023, a wave of claims hit the world media that North Korea was allegedly experiencing a famine comparable to the Arduous March of the 1990s. A BBC article supposedly based on covert interviews with anonymous sources straight from North Korea (DPRK) and a documentary film based on the same material were the driving elements. The BBC has been for months surreptitiously conversing with three North Koreans residing in the country, revealing “the disaster unfolding there since the government closed its borders…

The development of the satellite was one of the key weapons projects announced by Kim Jong-un during the congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in January 2021, along with a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (already launched) and a nuclear submarine (not yet seen). Earlier, the DPRK announced the launch of a satellite five times – in 1998, 2009 and 2016 and twice (April and December) in 2012. However, it presumably only managed to put the satellite into orbit in December 2012 and in 2016, and even then, according…

Readers of previous articles by the present writer will know that the present author has a special interest in defectors from North Korea. As a result of their efforts a number of extravagant myths have been spread for propaganda purposes, largely because they tend to be from an upper middle-class background in North Korea, and in order to be able to afford an equivalent standard of living in the South they need to earn money by selling alarming stories. One of the few exceptions to this rule was Thae Yong-ho, who has been able to attain a status and influence no less than those which had before…