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North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu (Amnok) and Tumen rivers, and South Korea to the south at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. North Korea's border with South Korea is a disputed border as both countries claim the entirety of the Korean Peninsula. The country's western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. Pyongyang is the capital and largest city.
Relations between North Korea and the United States have been historically hostile. The two countries have no formal diplomatic relations. Instead, they have adopted an indirect diplomatic arrangement using neutral intermediaries. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang is the US protecting power and provides limited consular services to U.S. citizens. North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), does not have an embassy in Washington, DC, but is represented in the United States through its mission to the United Nations in New York City which serves as North Korea's de facto embassy.
Kim Jong Il was a North Korean politician who was the second supreme leader of North Korea. He led North Korea from the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994 until his own death in 2011, when he was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Un. Afterwards, Kim Jong Il was declared Eternal General Secretary of the WPK.
The Sunshine Policy (Korean: 햇볕정책) is the theoretical basis for South Korea's foreign policy towards North Korea. Its official title is The Reconciliation and Cooperation Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북화해협력정책), and it is also known as The Operational Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북운영정책) and The Embracing Policy (Korean: 포용정책).
Kang Chol-hwan is a North Korean defector, author, and the founder and president of the North Korea Strategy Center.
The mass media in North Korea is amongst the most strictly controlled in the world. The constitution nominally provides for freedom of speech and the press. However, the government routinely disregards these rights, and seeks to mold information at its source. A typical example of this was the death of Kim Jong Il, news of which was not divulged until two days after it occurred. Kim Jong Un, who replaced his father as the leader, has largely followed in the footsteps of both his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and his father. However, new technologies are being made more freely available in the country. State-run media outlets are setting up websites, while mobile phone ownership in the country has escalated rapidly. "There is no country which monopolizes and controls successfully the internet and information as North Korea does," said Kang Shin-sam, an expert on North Korean technology and co-head of the International Solidarity for Freedom of Information in North Korea, a nonprofit based in South Korea. North Korea has about four million mobile-phone subscribers circa 2022—roughly one-sixth of the population and four times the number in 2012, according to an estimate by Kim Yon-ho, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Kim Jong Un is a North Korean politician who has been supreme leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 2012. He is the third son of Kim Jong Il, who was North Korea's second supreme leader from 1994 until his death in 2011, and Ko Yong Hui. He is a grandson of Kim Il Sung, who was the founder and first supreme leader of North Korea from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994.
North Korea ranks among some of the most extreme censorship in the world, with the government able to take strict control over communications. North Korea sits at the bottom of Reporters Without Borders' 2023 Press Freedom Index, ranking 180 out of the 180 countries investigated.
Propaganda is widely used and produced by the government of North Korea (DPRK). Most propaganda is based on the Juche ideology and on the promotion of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Kim Kyong-hui is the aunt of current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. She is the daughter of the founding North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and the sister of the late leader Kim Jong Il. She currently serves as Secretary for Organization of the Workers' Party of Korea. An important member of Kim Jong Il's inner circle of trusted friends and advisors, she was director of the WPK Light Industry Department from 1988 to 2012. She was married to Jang Song-thaek, who was executed in December 2013 in Pyongyang, after being charged with treason and corruption.
Sung-Yoon Lee is a scholar of Korean and East Asian studies, and specialist on North Korea. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was also an associate in research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. and a research fellow at the National Asia Research Program.
Jang Jin-sung is the pseudonym of a North Korean poet and government official who defected to South Korea. He had worked as a psychological warfare officer within the United Front Department of the Korean Workers' Party. Jang specifically worked within the United Front Department Section 5 (Literature), Division 19 (Poetry) of Office 101. Office 101 created propaganda intended to encourage South Korean sympathy for North Korea. One of Jang's job duties was to create poetry under a South Korean pseudonym Kim Kyong-min and in a South Korean style. His poetry was intended for distribution within South Korea. A South Korean court has sentenced him to six months in prison, after finding him guilty of a sexual crime against a former female coworker.
Park Sang-hak is a North Korean democracy activist and is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea. Park Sang-hak is a hard-line anti-communist who is also in solidarity with the conservative movement in South Korea.
Freedom Collection is a digital repository sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Southern Methodist University's campus in Dallas, Texas. The collection documents major players in human rights and freedom movements around the world during the 20th and 21st centuries through video interviews and documents. Contributors include former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Syrian dissident and author Ammar Abdulhamid, former president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic Václav Havel, Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng, former president of Peru Alejandro Toledo, and Egyptian author Saad Eddin Ibrahim. At its launch on March 28, 2012, the collection consisted of 56 interviews. As of 2022, the Freedom Collection website was last updated in 2016 and its YouTube channel, where video interviews are available to watch, was last updated in October 2015. It is unclear if the project is still active.
Media coverage of North Korea is hampered by an extreme lack of reliable information, coupled with an abundant number of sensationalist falsehoods. There are a number of reasons for this lack of information and incorrect stories.
The Free North Korea Radio is a radio broadcaster based in Seoul, South Korea. The station is run primarily by North Korean refugees and defectors and frequently broadcasts shortwave transmissions of news and information to the general population inside North Korea. The radio was established by Kim Seong-min, a former North Korean military monitor for foreign broadcasts, who was influenced by the foreign broadcasts that he monitored and defected from North Korea in 1996.
North Korean People's Liberation Front is a South Korean militant paramilitary organization consisting of North Korean defectors, formed by former defecting members of the Korean People's Army, planning to overthrow the North Korean government. It is based in Seoul.
Balloon propaganda campaigns in Korea include both North and South Korean propaganda leaflet campaigns through the use of balloons as a distribution method since the Korean War. A variety of other contents have also been included with the balloons. Originally, these campaigns were organized by the governments and militaries of the Korean states. Contemporarily, however, they are mainly organized by South Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that regularly involve themselves in balloon release events that aim to send materials censored in North Korea, as well as various other goods, to the North Korean people.
The 2018−19 Korean peace process was initiated to resolve the long-running Korean conflict and denuclearize Korea. International concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons came to a head in 2017, when they posed a direct threat to the United States. At the same time, Moon Jae-in was elected president of South Korea with the promise of returning to the Sunshine Policy, favoring good relations with North Korea. A series of summits were held between North Korea's Kim Jong Un, South Korea's Moon, and Donald Trump of the United States. Trump became the first sitting US President to meet a North Korean leader and to enter North Korean territory. Kim became the first North Korean leader to enter South Korean territory. Moon became the first South Korean President to give a speech in North Korea. In parallel to this, a number of cultural exchanges began. Tensions were lowered on both sides of the DMZ.
References
- ↑ "Kim Seong-min". Free North Korea Radio. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
- 1 2 3 "Kim Seong Min: Good morning Pyongyang". The Independent. 16 March 2010. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ↑ Free North Korea Radio https://freenorthkorearadio.org/team/ . Retrieved 7 July 2020.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ Ji-eun, Baek. North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society. Yale University Press. p. 112.
- ↑ "Kim Seong Min: Heroes – the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation". Vaclav Havel Library Foundation. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ↑ "Freedom Collection » Interviews » Kim Seong Min". George W. Bush Institute. Retrieved 7 July 2020.