About the Author
Fyodor Tertitskiy
Fyodor Tertitskiy is a lecturer at Seoul’s Korea University. He is the author of "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" and several other books on North Korean history and military.
Get behind the headlines
Evergreen Fight the power: A rare student protest in North KoreaHow the Cultural Revolution inspired a short-lived student rebellion in Pyongyang ![]() North Korea is not a completely mono-ethnic nation. There are some ethnic minorities inside the country, the most significant being the Chinese diaspora, or Hwagyo in Korean. What is important about them is that they are de jure foreigners: Hwagyo hold citizenship of the People’s Republic of China, not of the DPRK. During the long history of North Korea, the Hwagyo have experienced many ups and downs, and those who have remained in the country eventually ended up being a ‘trade minority’: rich, but excluded from politics, not that dissimilar from Jews in medieval Europe. © Korea Risk Group. All rights reserved. |