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One reason we were motivated to write Witness to Transformation is to add in our small way to the collective memory. But nothing is more compelling than letting the refugees speak for themselves. In the attached TED talk, Hyeonseo Lee tells her story in a simple, direct and moving way: the indoctrination as a child, [...]
Sometimes propaganda and art blend together in a way that leaves the viewer unable to separate the two forces or discern which is which. Such is the case with the annual Arirang Games in North Korea, the epic gymnastics and synchronized art display that involves as many as 100,000 active participants. This year’s Arirang Games [...]
We are always interested in news from organizations doing work in North Korea. Wheat Mission Ministries sent us a Christmas card, so we thought we would pass along their website. Founded in 1989 by Sandra Suh and based in LA, the organization was involved in feeding programs as soon as the regime opened to the [...]
Thanks to Eric Weingartner at Cankor we have advance notice of two new films on North Korea that showed at the Toronto film festival. We already commented on one: Comrade Kim Goes Flying. This film is of interest in part because it is a joint Belgium, UK & North Korea production, more evidence of the [...]
We have generally been cautious-to-skeptical about whether the change in style at the top of the North Korean leadership has any substantive significance. Recently, my colleague Marcus Noland rightly poked fun at North Korea’s Camelot moment. But a link to a DPRK television broadcast sent to us by Georgy Toloraya is giving us pause. (For [...]
For anyone in New York, the Korea Society is hosting an exhibition of early realist South Korean photography entitled Traces of Life: Seen Through Korean Eyes 1945-1992. The photographs are on loan from one of the first public photography museums in Korea, Dong-Gang Museum of Photography, and from several of the photographers (or their estates) [...]
Eric Lafforgue is a European photographer who has made a worldwide reputation for himself with sharply-etched pictures of people in out-of-the-way places: Papua New Guinea, including Trobriand Islanders, south Ethiopian tribes like the Surma, and now North Korea. One portfolio simply offers glimpses of the new Pyongyang: a hamburger shop, a couple walking hand in [...]
Among the many disconnects between North Korea and the world is the sterility of its architecture and the relentless attempt to suppress the advantages of urban life: the diversity, bustle and commerce of a city. While the authorities take pride in their monuments—and minders force consent out of visitors–outsiders rightly see them as emblematic of [...]
The WFP recently put out this video on the situation in North Korea and their activities there:
The contradictory evidence with respect to conditions in North Korean continues with a report from AlertNet, a humanitarian news service run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. An AlertNet reporter and Reuters photographers and video journalists spent a week in the South Hwanghae region that included visits to collective farms, orphanages, hospitals, rural clinics, schools and [...]
