July 27, 2023, was the 70th anniversary of the official end of the Korean War. In the DPRK this date is widely celebrated, and this year one of the main events in the ceremonies was the arrival of a Russian delegation, led by Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu. On July 25, the DPRK’s official press agency, KCNA reported: “At the invitation of the Ministry of National Defense of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), a military delegation of the Russian Federation led by Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu…

The 8th Enlarged Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was held in Pyongyang from June 16-18, 2023. The KCNA reports that the interim outcomes for the first half of 2023 were summarized, and the issues of the party’s development and strengthening, state-building, diplomatic, and defense strategies in the context of the changing international environment were discussed. The plenary meeting followed the classical structure of the recent years of Kim Jong-un’s rule: a report noting…

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…

In late April and early May 2023, the Yoon Suk-yeol administration took several steps towards aggravating inter-Korean relations. However, although the Washington Declaration was the most notable of them, the author draws attention to three less noticeable events that can make a much more serious contribution to the aggravation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The first step – This is the decision of the court, which restored the accreditation of the so-called “Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK)”. It is this NGO that launches millions of leaflets across the border, and also long before the events in Ukraine tried to blow up statues of North Korean leaders…