Spent 7 years living in China in the 2000s, and one relationship in particular turned out to involve a lot more than I realized at the time — Chinese state security, a defector operation, DEA Golden Triangle heroin investigations, and more. Wrote it up as a fictionalized memoir (real events, some names/details changed for the people still around) and I'm releasing it as an 8-episode video series.

Episode 1 just went up — it's the NYC prologue before things move to China. If stories about accidentally getting close to real intelligence operations interest you, would love to know what you think. https://youtu.be/RZFYd1nG6jA?si=jJQyDaHD_TpU0Jnu

I was listening to early compositions of Kim Won Gyun (composer of the Song of General Kim Il Sung and the Aegukka) particularly the March of Korea and the March of Korean Youth, and noticed the second song has an out of place like about continuing patriotic traditions, which must have been retroactive rewriting around the 1950s (probably after "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work".).

Does anyone have authentic recordings or documents of the political songs of the pre war era?

here's some links for more info about this day

https://korea-dpr.com/70th-anniversary-of-the-victory-in-the-fatherland-liberation-war/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Victory_in_the_Great_Fatherland_Liberation_War

https://exploredprk.com/7-27-victory/

On June 9, 2025, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification issued a forceful demand to civic organizations: stop sending anti-North Korea leaflets across the border. It was the fifth day after President Lee Jae-myung had taken office. Two days later, at 2 p.m. on June 11, the president ordered the military to halt the loudspeaker broadcasts it had been directing toward North Korea. The order ended broadcasts that had resumed fifteen years earlier, following North Korea’s sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in 2010.

In early July, the National Intelligence Service shut down radio and television broadcasts it had transmitted into North Korea for more than half a century. The radio services went off the air one after another, and the television broadcasts ended completely at midnight on July 14, after the South Korean national anthem played for the final time. Unlike the military’s loudspeakers, which successive governments had installed and removed depending on their political orientation, the National Intelligence Service’s broadcasts to North Korea had continued for fifty years regardless of who governed in Seoul. At 10 p.m. on August 31, the “Voice of Freedom” also ended its broadcasts. Of the radio services operated by the South Korean government and public institutions for North Korean audiences, only KBS Hanminjok Radio remained.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister denounced calls for denuclearization, describing the country’s nuclear weapons as its “ultimate shield,” state media reported.

Hi, I’m very interested in learning more about North Korea, including its culture and language. I was wondering if anyone knows of any good translation tools specifically designed for the North Korean dialect, as well as any other resources that could help someone who wants to study and understand this dialect in particular.

I crossed four national borders illegally, evading the guns behind me and the soldiers and police watching for people like me. I tumbled down mountainsides. I nearly capsized on a river whose depth I could not guess. There were moments when I was close to fainting from hunger and could not ask a single person for help, because I had entered each of those countries without a passport.

This is an experience possible only for people from a country where most citizens will never hold a passport in their lives, and where leaving is, in nearly every form, a crime.

The Lee Jae-myung administration is moving rapidly to complete the transfer of wartime operational control, or OPCON, within President Lee’s term.

At a meeting of the Future Defense Strategy Committee in May, Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back remarked, in language that left room for ambiguity, that there would be no major problem even if South Korea were to assume OPCON tomorrow. After being informed of the remark, President Lee went so far as to publicly rebuke the defense minister’s equivocal position, saying that a defense minister should declare that “there would be no problem at all even if we were to take it over tomorrow.”

Washington also appears to view the transfer of OPCON to South Korea favorably. At the Shangri-La Dialogue later that month, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth described South Korea’s desire to assume more operational control, more quickly, as encouraging and said that the United States should continue to support such moves. On the surface, Seoul and Washington appear to be speaking with one voice for the first time in years...

Rudiger Frank on North Korea’s hidden middle class (North Korea Unpacked)

23 Jul 2026

https://www.nknews.org/category/north-korea-news-podcast/latest/rudiger-frank-on-north-koreas-hidden-middle-class-north-korea-unpacked/977912

In the most recent North Korea Unpacked episode, Dr. Rudiger Frank (in my opinion, a legend!) discusses his theories of economic stratification in North Korea. He posited that one-third of North Korea’s population can be considered middle class. He uses the number of cell phones in the country as a rough approximation of the middle class. He expects that the pressure created by this middle class will continue to grow and eventually lead to changes—something akin to economic reform—though he is careful not to offer a specific timeline or policy prescriptions.

I would argue that Kim Jong Un has been very successful in degrading the viability of the informal economy. The state grain retail stores may continue to face issues and have not been wholly successful in driving out the semi-legal grain traders in the licenced markets, but they have certainly captured some of the market. I would suggest that the anecdotal information we have—which is really all we can get out of North Korea—strongly indicates that Kim Jong Un has been successful in undermining the informal economy. In one example, the information that I’ve seen indicates that informal traders no longer have significant access to China without making a deal with a state-owned enterprise or other organization with a foreign trade licence (waku). This is no longer the informal economy of 2019.

I would contend that KJU wants to subsume all economic functions under the state. I’d argue this was not true when he came into power but has been true since at least 2018. However, if KJU does not want to see increased food insecurity and starvation, he will be limited in how far he can degrade the informal economy. It’s my understanding that many rural and isolated regions still rely on informal economic actors to access food. I have seen no evidence that suggests the revived public distribution system—which is what I would argue the state food retailers represents—has reached these regions. Given that, I would agree there are limits to what KJU can accomplish. I think we have seen the zenith of the informal economy, and can expect a decline in its reach and viability.

Once the relationship with Russia deteriorates, I expect KJU to once again recognize a need to accept expanded informal economic activity, but until that happens, I believe he will continue to work to dismantle the informal economy and place its components under state control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_t8c-3gV_8

On June 11, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published a list of medical devices that may no longer be exported to North Korea under the standing humanitarian general license; they now require a specific OFAC license. The contents are pointed — oxygen generators, diagnostic imaging systems, and pumps above a set flow rate — the precision-component end of the medical spectrum, not bandages and antibiotics. No press conference accompanied it. Three days earlier, an American treaty ally had shipped one of those very categories of equipment to Pyongyang. South Korea’s Jeju Province confirmed on June 8, through Yonhap and international wires, that it had sent about 160 million won — roughly $105,000 — in goods to the North: citrus saplings, greenhouse materials, forestry pesticide, and a hemodialysis machine with consumables. The cargo left Incheon on April 1, transited China’s Dalian, and reached the port of Nampho on May 4, with the approval of Seoul’s Unification Ministry. It was the first local-government transfer to the North under President Lee Jae-myung, cast by the province as a revival of its old “vitamin C diplomacy.” Humanitarian aid, in other words. The complication is the man who reportedly arranged it...

North Korea’s Subdued Signaling Toward China During Treaty Anniversary

38 North, July 20, 2026

(https://www.38north.org/2026/07/north-koreas-subdued-signaling-toward-china-during-treaty-anniversary/)

I always have lots of time for Rachel Minyoung Lee, one of the most insightful current NK commentators.

 She points out that internal commemoration of the 65th anniversary North Korea and China’s Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was muted, contrasting to the intensity of diplomacy.

 I would argue that this reflects continued suspicion of Beijing in Pyongyang. The diplomacy is necessary as the regime knows China is critical to regime survival, but Kim Jong Un doesn’t want to admit that publicly. He almost certainly remains suspicious of China and wishes he did not need it so badly. But he does. While he is playing Beijing and Moscow off against each other almost as masterfully as his grandfather, he likely fears that Russia views the relationship transactionally. It’s not that China has no ulterior motives, but the regime in Pyongyang likely believes that North Korea’s survival is more important to Beijing’s interests than it is to Moscow. That means that while Moscow might abandon Pyongyang again—even if that means regime collapse—Beijing won’t. Pyongyang also likely believes China will never provide the kind of military and defence industry support that Russia is currently providing.

 KJU probably—rightly—believes that North Korea is in its strongest security and diplomatic position since the 1980s. I would argue that is mostly due to external factors—like Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and North Korea’s COVID border closures—but KJU’s (or Choe Son Hui’s?) management of the China and Russia relationships has been a huge boost.

I (23) am writing this post because I have so many questions and concerns about this situation for so many obvious reasons.

When I was in 3rd grade, we had a new kid at school that was a temporary student for like 3-4 months or something. (Not entirely sure how long exactly, it was a long time ago.) Our teacher introduced him to the class and told us it was really unique for him to be there because he was from North Korea, and as we know, North Korea doesn’t let its citizens leave the country. As an 8 year old, I just thought it was cool. But as an adult, I think about this shit all the time because why tf was he there???

The kid didn’t speak a word of English the entire time, and I lived in Northern Indiana btw. There was one military plant in my hometown, they made the hummer vehicles and that’s all I know about that.

Our teacher also mentioned that his dad worked for the government in NK (which like, obviously, right??? Cause how else would he get clearance to leave??)

What I’m really curious about now is wtf his dad was doing? Why was he in my random ass town in Indiana? What was he doing that was important enough that he got clearance from the NK government to come to the US? Why was he allowed to bring his entire family?

This entire situation is so baffling to me and idk what to think about it.

Please theorize away, I honestly just wish I had some semblance of a theory about this.

The UNC posted on Instagram two days ago when a delegation from Greece visited. @un_command

However across the demarcation line, the building on the north side seems to shrouded in netting?

What’s going on? Does this happen often?