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A constantly recurring question is how decades of chronic food insecurity interspersed with food emergencies and even outright famine may affect the long-term physical and mental health of the North Korean people. Since we cannot do direct scientific study of the North Korean population, thinking on this issue is by its very nature speculative. One way [...]
We like to spotlight existing and new organizations doing work on North Korea, and New Focus International brought this start-up to our attention: the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea. According to its founder Mike Glendinning, the organization began via social media and has the ambition to work with refugees to highlight issues [...]
OK, this one is not about North Korea per se, much less its economy, but it is cool. Check it out:
SinoNK is one of a handful of sites—like Curtis Melvin’s North Korea Economy Watch and Michael Madden’s North Korea Leadership Watch—that we find ourselves visiting repeatedly. A central insight of SinoNK is that China is not Beijing and that the border provinces have a distinctive and underappreciated role in China-DPRK relations. It is not only [...]
We’re all ashamed to admit it, but most of us occasionally “Google” ourselves to see what comes up. A New Zealand fantasy author comes up for me. A new website created by Frank Feinstein lets you do the same with North Korean official propaganda. KCNA Watch is a website that indexes every KCNA (Korea Central News Agency) article [...]
We are introducing a new periodic feature on the blog called NGO’s in Action. Amidst all of the trouble, it is important to highlight the numerous groups that are seeking to do good work in North Korea, whether related to human rights, information, refugees or the massive humanitarian tasks facing the country. We cannot, of [...]
We have a standing interest in sanctions: when they work and when they don’t. We have followed the sanctions efforts vis-à-vis Iran in particular, as it is the only current comparator case to North Korea: a regime that thrives on posing nuclear challenges to the rest of the world. VOX has recently posted a short [...]
Amidst all the troubles, it is worth pausing to spotlight the good humanitarian work done by NGOs working in North Korea. We were recently reminded by of the work of the American Friends Service Committee. In 1997, AFSC was one of several NGOs that received permission to work directly with cooperative farms. Since then, it [...]
Tony Kornheiser, former sportswriter and humor columnist for the Washington Post, color commentator on Monday Night Football, current ESPN opinion-spewer on “Pardon the Interruption,” and most importantly local radio show talkmeister, (available on podcast, but expect delays) last appeared in this blog declaring North Korea “the most innovative country on Earth.” Provoked by news items read by his producer [...]
We are always interested in new sources of material on North Korea, and thus were pleased to come on New Focus International. A distinctive feature of New Focus is that it is run by North Koreans “in exile,” as they site puts it nicely; the choice of words suggests the promise of return. The editor-in-chief [...]
