North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) appears to have purged its archive this year, deleting all content published before 2023 save for select reports on events attended by leader Kim Jong Un. 

The deletion of hundreds of texts referencing key terms or names related to unification and South Korea follows Kim’s announcement at last December’s plenum that unification with the South is realistically “impossible.”

The move also resembles a vast media purge after the 2013 execution of Jang Song Thaek, North Korea’s former Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission and uncle of Kim Jong Un. 

KCNA,