North Korea News Podcast by NK News

Unification has been a primary ethos of both South and North Korean identity since the peninsula was split in two, a sine qua non of a shared 'minjok' bloodline that stretches back (accordingly) 5000 years.

But what was once self-evident for South Koreans is no longer so, particularly among younger, more diverse, more metropolitan South Koreans that seek and appreciate community and connections beyond tribal ethnic dimensions.

Darcie Draudt, an expert in Korean identity and South Korea’s changing multiculturalism, explains how these concepts and ideas impact Seoul’s policy towards North Korea.

Darcie Draudt is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at Johns Hopkins University, and was recently in Seoul as a Korea Foundation dissertation fieldwork fellow and a visiting scholar at the Yonsei University department of political science.

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: Uriminzokkiri

Hard numbers are, well, hard to come by in and from North Korea, making quantitative analysis much more challenging than it would be in other parts of the world. The denouement of decades of poor or non-existence record keeping means even rather mundane measurements, such as a national census, are at best guesswork.

Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt has sought to clear up the opacity to provide more accurate demographic and economic development statistics for North Korea.

On this week's episode, we talk about his work and related challenges, why North Korea’s poor numerics may in fact be a strategic move, predicting the end of the DPRK, and learn about the time he got a death threat from Pyongyang.

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on demographics and economic development generally, and more specifically on international security in the Korean peninsula and Asia.

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

How does North Korea retain control over its 25 million people, and is that control administered on a day-to-day basis?

These questions drove scholar Benjamin Silberstein's interest in the DPRK, and on this week's episode he discusses the country's powerful police state, the importance of Songbun, and broader issues of law and order in North Korea.

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein is a 2019 Templeton Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, editor of North Korea Economy Watch, and a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

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.

This episode is part six of a special summer miniseries on the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students. You can listen to part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, and part five here.

The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students was held in the North Korean capital almost thirty years ago next month. A global gathering of international Communist Party-affiliated youth organizations, it represented something of a last hurrah for a world that was soon to disappear in a storm of revolution and unrest.

Hosted by North Korea — in large part as a response to the South’s successful hosting of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games — the festival cost the country billions and saw thousands of international students descend on Pyongyang for an event devoted to “Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship.”

Norwegian historian August Myrseth wrote his master’s thesis on the festival, and applies theory, history, and politics to the event in a unique way that gives a broad perspective of the festival’s significance in and outside of North Korea, particularly in the communist world of old.

(And, as a little extra for our podcast listeners who are particularly interested in the festival, host Jacco Zwetsloot has created a playlist of all the videos on YouTube of the festival, which you can watch here.)

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: Retro DPRK

Is China truly the security threat in Asia that Washington seems convinced it is? David Kang doesn’t think so, and he points the actions of the Koreas and others as evidence that states in the region are calibrated to a world in which China does not need to be balanced against.

On this week's podcast, Dr. Kang explains how this fundamental misunderstanding of the security calculus spills over into the North Korea issue, explores the top-down engagement approach currently favored by U.S. and North Korean leaders, and how decision-makers can better align policy to more accurately reflect the reality on the ground.

David C. Kang is Professor of International Relations and Business at the University of Southern California, with appointments in both the School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business. He is also Director of USC Korean Studies Institute and Director of the USC Center for International Studies.

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: The White House

This episode is part five of a special summer miniseries on the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students. You can listen to part one here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.

The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students was held in the North Korean capital almost thirty years ago next month. A global gathering of international Communist Party-affiliated youth organizations, it represented something of a last hurrah for a world that was soon to disappear in a storm of revolution and unrest.

Hosted by North Korea — in large part as a response to the South’s successful hosting of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games — the festival cost the country billions and saw thousands of international students descend on Pyongyang for an event devoted to “Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship.”

Choi Sung-guk, a former North Korean national who has since defected to the South and built a career for himself as an animator and cartoonist, lived in Pyongyang during the festival and observed the micro-level changes in the city as a young boy.

We talk about what he saw, how he interpreted it, his journey to South Korea, and where he draws inspiration for his animation.

(And, as a little extra for our podcast listeners who are particularly interested in the festival, host Jacco Zwetsloot has created a playlist of all the videos on YouTube of the festival, which you can watch here.)

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 interview with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: ournation-school.com (우리민족강당)

Sanctions continue to be the main sticking point seemingly preventing greater diplomatic progress from occurring between the U.S. and North Korea.

But is Kim Jong Un interpreting them the same way that Washington believes? If so, what kind of dispersed or targeted impacts do we see, and do those align with broader objectives on the peninsula?

Dr. Go Myong-hyun, a trained neuropsychiatrist, has been applying a non-conventional tool set to the North Korea sanctions issue for years.

He joins us on this episode of the NK News Podcast to talk about the impact that sanctions are having for the government in Pyongyang, the North Korean people, and whether they are effective in the way outsiders imagine.

Go Myong-hyun is a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Previously, Dr. Go was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, Neuropsychiatry Institute. His research applies quantitative perspectives to traditional and non-traditional security issues.

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 interview with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: KCNA

Thousands of western tourists travel to North Korea every year, though doing so raises questions about whether money from sightseeing ultimately ends up contributing to the country's nuclear weapons program and whether visitors are putting themselves in danger of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.

Simon Cockerell of Koryo Tours has been facilitating trips to the DPRK for over a decade and has been there himself nearly 200 times (by his own counting).

In this episode, Simon makes the case for visiting the North, why it’s not as dangerous as is believed in some circles, and what impact regular foreign interaction and engagement may have on the North Korean people.

Simon Cockerell is the general manager of Koryo Tours, the largest and oldest travel company taking people to North Korea.

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 interview with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: Koryo Tours

North Korea has fired a series of short-range ballistic missiles and other projectiles in the last two weeks, the first such weapons provocations since early May.

The launches were accompanied, before and shortly after, by language that strongly suggests they were designed as retaliation for joint U.S.-South Korea exercises this month.

In this roundtable, NK News’s Chad O’Carroll, Oliver Hotham, and Rachel Minyoung Lee join host Jacco Zwetsloot to discuss the launches, what North Korea is trying to achieve, and how it may impact diplomatic dialogue in the future.

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 interview with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Featured image: KCTV

North Korea and Syria have long enjoyed close ties, sharing historical roots in the anti-imperialist socialist camp during the Cold War and the relationship between the two countries' founding leaders, Kim Il Sung and Hafez Al-Assad.

That friendship has only grown stronger in recent years, too, as North Korea and Syria have become increasingly internationally isolated over, respectively, their nuclear programs and a brutal and now almost-a-decade-long civil war.

At the forefront of this unusual alliance is Tamman Sulaiman, who this week joined the NK News podcast to discuss the Damascus-Pyongyang alliance, expanding cooperation between the two countries, and daily life as a diplomat in the DPRK.

Tamman Sulaiman has served as Syrian Ambassador to North Korea since 2015. Prior to that, he served as Charge D'Affaires Ad Interim in Pyongyang, and before that as Syrian Ambassador to Australia.

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 interview with leading experts and analysts in the field and insight from our very own journalists.

Ambassador Sulaiman with his wife in Pyongyang | Picture: NK News

Featured image: file photo