North Korea

Cyberattack against the DPRK: Reasons for the January 2022 Escalation?

When talking about the reasons for the end of the North Korean moratorium, global media and most pundits have disregarded one factor that could have played a key role in the DPRK leadership’s decision. On January 14, 2022, NK News reported about North Korea’s disappearance from the Internet that lasted several hours as crucial servers inside […]

Is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Beginning to Open Up?

After a year and a half of interruption, North Korea has reopened rail connections with China. Since the end of January 2020, the DPRK has halted cross-boarder railway services. Even though on June 26, 2020 one freight train passed from Hunchun (a border city in China’s Jilin province) to Tumangang station on the North Korea-Russian […]

Is the End of DPRK Moratorium at Hand?

The previous publication on the North Korean missile launches ended on the description of the events that took place on January 14, 2022. The missiles were fired after the North warned of a “stronger reaction” in response to newly imposed US sanctions on six North Korean citizens involved in weapons of mass destruction programs as well […]

North Korea’s Missile Tests of January 2022

As the reader may recall, on January 5, 2022, the DPRK National Defense Academy conducted a test launch of a hypersonic missile, which “reconfirmed the flight control and stability of the missile in the active-flight stage and assessed the performance of the new lateral movement technique applied to the detached hypersonic gliding warhead.” The rocket […]

A Lesson in Source Studies or Did Kim Jong-il Really Invent Shawarma?

In early January, several media outlets ran a clickbait headline, “North Korea Claims Kim Jong-il Invented Shawarma.” This fast-food dish is popular in post-Soviet countries. The statement about its North Korean roots immediately broke into negative comments about how North Korea is duping the people and making them believe that its top leaders have invented […]

A Pause in the Talks between the US and North Korea Continues

Since the failure of February 2019’s summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, relations between the US and North Korea have been put on hold, with no active dialogue, but no nuclear crisis or military stand-off.  On the one hand, Pyongyang has avoided any talks on the question of denuclearization. On the other hand, it is […]

Two Fake Stories about the DPRK in November 2021

Anti-Pyongyang propaganda periodically delights the world with horror stories in the DPRK, which circulate well in the media and which now must be clarified. It happened twice in the second half of November. On November 16, Radio Free Asia, a private non-profit news service funded by the US government, told the world the heartbreaking story […]