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.
North Korea has diplomatic relations with 164 states. The country's foreign relations have been dominated by its conflict with South Korea and its historical ties to the Soviet Union. Both the government of North Korea and the government of South Korea claim to be the sole legitimate government of the whole of Korea. The de facto end of the Korean War left North Korea in a military confrontation with South Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
Pyongyang is the capital and largest city of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, where it is sometimes labeled as the "Capital of the Revolution". Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about 109 km (68 mi) upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. According to the 2008 population census, it has a population of 3,255,288. Pyongyang is a directly administered city with a status equal to that of the North Korean provinces.
Elsevier is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as The Lancet, Cell, the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, Trends, the Current Opinion series, the online citation database Scopus, the SciVal tool for measuring research performance, the ClinicalKey search engine for clinicians, and the ClinicalPath evidence-based cancer care service. Elsevier's products and services include digital tools for data management, instruction, research analytics, and assessment.
John Kenneth Muir is an American literary critic. As of 2022, he has written thirty reference books in the fields of film and television, with a particular focus on the horror and science fiction genres.
Michelle Vogel is an Australian-born film historian, author and free-lance editor. Vogel has written biographies of Gene Tierney, Marjorie Main, Olive Thomas, Olive Borden, Lupe Vélez, Joan Crawford, and Marilyn Monroe, as well as two compilations 'Children of Hollywood Accounts of Growing up as Sons and Daughters of Stars' and 'Hollywood Blondes Golden Girls of the Silver Screen'. She has also written a children's book entitled 'Three Twisted Tales'.
David Dilley Bannon is an American author and translator, best known for the books Elements of Subtitles and Wounded in Spirit. He translates from Korean-to-English and German-to-English, notably the works of Friedrich Rückert. Bannon was born in Washington State in the United States. The son of photographer Dennis Dilley, he left home at age 19, spending many years in Asia. He taught college for two decades and was curator of Asian art for the Florence Museum of Art and History in South Carolina, USA. Bannon has appeared on The Discovery Channel (1997), Ancient Mysteries (1997), In Search of History (1999), On the Inside (2001), TechTV (2003) and History's Mysteries (2006). He has been interviewed by NPR, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal. He has translated subtitles for 44 South Korean television shows, including East of Eden (2008), The Great Queen Seondeok (2009), Dong Yi (2010), The Greatest Love (2011), Soldier (2012), Lights and Shadows (2011), Nine-tailed Fox (2013) and Mystery Television (2019). In 2006, Bannon was convicted on charges of criminal impersonation. He was sentenced to five years, serving three prior to his release. Married twice, he lost his only child, Jessica Autumn Bannon, to a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose in 2015. Bannon publishes on grief, art, history, culture, and translation, as well as delivering lectures at libraries, museums and conferences.
Brian Reynolds Myers, usually cited as B. R. Myers, is an American professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, best known for his writings on North Korean propaganda. He is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Myers is the author of Han Sǒrya and North Korean Literature, A Reader's Manifesto, The Cleanest Race, and North Korea's Juche Myth.
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 to 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. Kim Jong Un is the first leader of North Korea to have been born in the country after its establishment.
12 Days is a debut graphic novel/global manga written and illustrated by June Kim. Basing the plot partially on a story told to her by a stranger, Kim began an early version of 12 Days as a sophomore in college to help herself cope with the end of a relationship. After moving on emotionally with her break-up, she stopped developing the comic and later left South Korea to attend the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York, United States, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in cartooning. Following her successful pitch of 12 Days to manga publisher Tokyopop, she resumed work on it in early 2005 and finished in the middle of August 2006. 12 Days focuses on Jackie Yuen, who decides to drink the ashes of her former lover for twelve days in beverages as a way to cope with her grief over her death.
McFarland & Company, Inc., is an American independent book publisher based in Jefferson, North Carolina, that specializes in academic and reference works, as well as general-interest adult nonfiction. Its president is Rhonda Herman. Its former president and current editor-in-chief is Robert Franklin, who founded the company in 1979. McFarland employs a staff of about 50, and as of 2019 had published 7,800 titles. McFarland's initial print runs average 600 copies per book.
Suk Hi Kim is the editor of North Korean Review and a senior professor of international finance at the University of Detroit Mercy in the United States. He is the founding editor of the Multinational Business Review.
Comics studies is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop culture texts, scholars in fields such as semiotics, aesthetics, sociology, composition studies and cultural studies are now re-considering comics and graphic novels as complex texts deserving of serious scholarly study.
Suki Kim is a Korean American journalist and writer. She is the author of two books: the award-winning novel The Interpreter and a book of investigative journalism, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite. Kim is the only writer ever to have lived undercover in North Korea to conduct immersive journalism. Kim is currently a contributing editor at The New Republic.
The award system of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was initially created less than one month after the foundation of the Republic. During the years of Japanese occupation of Korea, many of the future leaders fled to the Soviet Union. During World War II many if not close to all party leaders and Korean People's Army commanders served in the Soviet Army and as such adopted many of the Soviet awards criteria for their own. During the late 1940s and until the Sino-Soviet Split in late 1958, orders and titles were made in the Soviet Money Mints in Moscow or Leningrad. Soviet made awards were modeled after Soviet orders and made of sterling silver. Initially the orders were attached to clothing with a screw-plate, but after Soviet production stopped, production was moved to North Korea. The screwback was replaced with a pin and the silver content was replaced with cheap tin. With the exception of a few examples of modern orders, Soviet and Czech KPA awards are the most sought after in current militaria markets.
Charles King Armstrong is an American historian of North Korea. From 2005 to 2020, he worked as the Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies at Columbia University, spending his last year on sabbatical after the university's determination that he had committed extensive plagiarism. Armstrong's works dealt with revolutions, cultures of socialism, architectural history, and diplomatic history in the contexts of East Asia and modern Korea, with a focus on North Korea.
Eugenia Kim is a Korean American writer and novelist who lives in Washington, DC. She is most known for her novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter, which was critically acclaimed and won multiple awards, including a 2009 Borders Original Voices Award for Fiction. Kim teaches at Fairfield University's MFA Creative Writing program.
North Korean studies is a sub-area of Korean studies. The number of researchers is comparatively small. The only fully dedicated institution to the study area is the University of North Korean Studies, Seoul, but many universities run undergraduate courses and postgraduate research programs.
Sung Deuk Hahm is Dean of the Graduate School of Political Studies and Naun Professor of Political Science and Law at Kyonggi University. Concurrently, he is a representative (2023–present) of the ruling People Power Party for the Special Committee for the Constitutional Revision at the Korean National Assembly. He was the executive director (2008-2010) of the Constitutional Revision Commission and the deputy director (2002-2008) of the Korean Legislative Studies Institute at the Korean National Assembly.
