WASHINGTON, D.C. – The blast at the al-Safir facility in July 2007, killing Syrians, Iranians and at least three North Korean ballistic missile specialists, is just one occasion in which underover operatives have died working on Damascus’s WMD arsenal. The clandestine weapons collaboration between North Korea and Damascus in recent years has left a trail [...]

WASHINGTON D.C. – North Korean military experts are deployed on the frontlines of the war in Syria, providing key assistance to the Assad government’s chemical weapons and ballistic missile programs, according to foreign intelligence, sources within the Syrian resistance and independent analysts. North Korean military assistance to Syria is part of a lengthy covert war [...]

A Flickr user has uploaded some interesting pictures of North Korea’s railway system. These pictures show some North Korean entrepreneurs have co-opted unused railway assets for private economic activity: This form of transport is known as “Torure” (도루레), and I recently had the chance to speak with a former resident of North Hamgyong Province who was [...]

Does North Korea produce art outside of and yet on the side of the official propaganda? Indeed it does, and why wouldn’t it? Like any other country, North Korea needs to build and preserve a lasting image of itself, creating values that its citizens can look up to and be inspired by. Had it not [...]

Kim Jong Un has recently wrapped up a tour of the east coast that represents the greatest length of time that the new leader has spent outside of the capital since inheriting power from his father. Below I offer satellite images of all the guidance destinations to give a sense of the areas he has [...]

Headlines from this week’s news include coverage of the Seventh Korean Children’s Union (KCU) Conference, citizen support for Kim Jong Un’s letter of appeal, and criticism of the “kidnapping” of nine North Korea citizens in Laos. KCU Conference  Young delegates from across North Korea gathered in Pyongyang over the weekend to commemorate the Seventh anniversary [...]

So after long hours of negotiations, the two Koreas have agreed that high-level talks will go ahead this week. This was clearly no easy victory for either side, as the failure to agree on a joint statement shows. The battle is clearly not yet over since the DPRK (North Korea) has not yet said at [...]

Pyongyang knows that lots of money, little exposure of North Koreans to South Korean influence, and not much actual work make Mt. Kumgang an ideal platform for cooperation with the South. [...]

A Facebook fan page representing itself as the “official profile” of North Korea’s main television network has seen a sharp spike in traffic in recent days – despite the fact that it may not actually be administered by the North Korean government [...]

While some kids are being sent away to summer camps in New England right now, others are on their way to the Songdowon International Children’s Camp in Wonsan, North Korea. Songdowon is one of the last vestiges of a type of cultural exchange seen in similar countries from across the Communist bloc in decades past, [...]