North Korea News Podcast by NK News

Ever wondered what it would be like to work at an embassy in Pyongyang? How dangerous it might be, how effective diplomacy may or may not be, or even just want it's like to live in North Korea?

Ambassador John Everard served as the UK’s lead diplomat in Pyongyang for over two years in the mid-2000s, and sat down with the NK News Podcast to discuss his experience on the ground, his analysis of North Korea’s diplomatic and national security objectives, and why he is pessimistic about prospects for peace in 2020.

Ambassador John Everard is the former British ambassador to North Korea and a former member of the United Nations' Panel of Experts on the DPRK. He is also the author of "Only Beautiful Please," an account of his time living in the DPRK.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code “PODCAST” at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Korean Studies occupies a small space in academia, a virtual shrimp among whales in the larger humanities ocean.

What happens, then, when one of the titans in this close-knit field is accused of plagiarism? Furthermore, what if it became clear that it was your work he or she had ripped off as their own?

Professor Balázs Szalontai found himself in this very situation, and it took years of painstaking effort to build the case against Charles Armstrong at Columbia University.

What unfolded was a scandal that rocked the Korean Studies field with implications that are still becoming apparent.

We talk with Szalontai about it, plus his scholarly work on North Korea, Pyongyang’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and what happened after Armstrong was exposed for stealing his work.

Balázs Szalontai is a professor in the North Korean Studies department at Korea University. He is a historian who focuses on the Cold War and well as the domestic and foreign policies of Communist regimes, particularly North Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Albania.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code “PODCAST” at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: Rodong Sinmun

Senior NK News correspondent Dagyum Ji has been behind some of our biggest stories, research, and analysis these last three years, including "fire and fury," summits, and missile launches.

Dagyum is off to Washington, DC to pursue her next great opportunity, and before she left we sat down with her to hear her thoughts on North Korea, the media scene in Seoul, her favorite NK News story, and more.

PLUS! A special “super-large” guest makes a surprise appearance on the show.

Dagyum Ji was, until this week, senior correspondent at NK News. Prior to that, she worked for Reuters TV.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code “PODCAST” at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: White House

To call Park Chul-un a powerhouse in inter-Korean relations may be an understatement. Park visited North Korea secretly decades before any real periods of détente would emerge between Seoul and Pyongyang. As one of the leading South Korean government figures in inter-Korean relations for a time, he has amassed decades' worth of experience and perspective.

He, along with translation from NK News's very own Jihye Park, explains how his clandestine visits north of the DMZ went down, why North Korea remains the wickedest of problems, what the Moon Jae-in administration and the U.S. should do differently, and -- of course -- his attendance at the 1989 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in Pyongyang.

Minister Park Chul-un was a three-time National Assemblyman in the 1980s and 1990s, Secretary to the President for Political Affairs, and the architect of the "Northern Policy" under former President Roh Tae-woo. He currently serves as the chairman of the Korea Foundation for Welfare and Unification, among other positions.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code “PODCAST” at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: NK News

Bringing in music, art, film, and other forms of entertainment into North Korea for the consumption of a highly select privileged elite has long been a controversial practice, particularly so if the cultural exchange in question involves one of the most controversial rock bands in the western world.

Laibach brought its own totalitarian aesthetics to the world's most totalitarian state back in 2015, and Morten Traavik directed the documentary about the trip.

We speak with Traavik, and his cultural interpreter Mary Sun Kim, about how the Laibach concert became a reality, navigating censorship, and North Korea's artistic sensibilities.

Morten Traavik is a Norwegian director and artist. Mary Sun Kim is an arts and literature researcher, interpreter, and photographer.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code “PODCAST” at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: courtesy of Morten Traavik

The United Nation's Report of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in North Korea was a landmark document that detailed and codified the horrors the Kim Jong Un regime and its forebears inflict upon its people.

Crimes against humanity, torture, rape, religious and racial persecution - these are but some of the gross human rights abuses that the North Korean people must endure on an everyday basis.

Michael Kirby led the commission and report, and he joins the NK News podcast to discuss his findings five years later, how things have changed (and haven’t), and what mechanisms exist to place human rights at the center of engagement with North Korea.

The Honourable Michael Kirby is a retired judge, formerly a Justice of the High Court of Australia serving from 1996 to 2009. In 2013 he was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to lead an inquiry into human rights abuses in the DPRK.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code “PODCAST” at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: UNICEF

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have made achieving denuclearization and establishing a "peace regime" on the peninsula their key foreign policy goals. 

Not everyone is convinced, however: David Straub, a 30-year U.S. State Department veteran and expert on East Asian politics and security, has been a critical voice of Moon and the South Korean left, as well as the Trump administration’s North Korea strategy.

In this week's episode, Straub joins the podcast to discuss U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era, what South Korea's progressive camp gets wrong about North Korea, and how to effectively negotiate with Pyongyang.

Note to listeners: this interview was conducted in September, before the resignation of John Bolton.

David Straub is a researcher, author, and commentator on Korean peninsula affairs and U.S.-Korea relations. He was a foreign service officer from 1976 to 2006, with his career in the State Department centering on Japan and Korea.

The NK Shop is now live: you can get all of your Christmas essentials there, including NK News calendars, t-shirts, posters, and much much more. Use the code "PODCAST" at the checkout for a $10 discount.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: Blue House

Join NK News staff and contributors for a very special centenary episode of the podcast

In April 2003, the Tuvalu-flagged North Korean Pong Su ship was seized by Australian authorities, with the ship's crew accused of smuggling up to 125 kg of heroin. The men were detained pending trial in Australia, only for them then to be acquitted and repatriated.

In this week's episode, host Jacco Zwetsloot -- who spent time with the ship's crew and their associates during their time in Australia back in 2003 -- speaks with journalist Richard Baker, the creator of a new podcast which investigates the unsolved questions surrounding the Pong Su case.

Richard Baker is a multi-award winning investigative reporter for The Age.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: Australian Department of Defence, modified by NK News

The first working-level talks between North Korea and the United States in months kicked off Saturday, only to break off hours later.

Both sides apparently walked away with different assessments of what went wrong, but it seems clear that expectations from both sides were as unaligned as they appeared to be at the Hanoi summit.

Hoping to make sense of what went wrong, NK News’s Oliver Hotham, Chad O’Carroll, Dagyum Ji, and Rachel Minyoung Lee sat down for a roundtable chat to discuss the negotiations and what they may mean for DPRK-U.S. relations going forward.

Also under discussion? South Korea's role in all this, the Bolton effect, and a very paranoid development in downtown Pyongyang.

About the podcast: The “North Korea News Podcast” is a weekly podcast hosted exclusively by NK News, covering all things DPRK: from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: KCNA, modified by NK News