Features
Long-form reporting on timeless issues and human interest stories by NK News journalists and contributors.
Comrade Razzi: an eccentric Italian politician’s unusual love for North Korea
The selfie-loving former senator has forged close ties with the "beautiful" DPRK
With the century: the extraordinary life and times of Kim Il Sung
How Korea, and the world, changed alongside the life of the infamous dictator
How North Korea’s devastating famine subverted the rigid “songbun” system
Many were able to use their foreign connections to start illegal, but profitable, cross-border businesses
“Kings of the country”: growing up in North Korea isn’t always as bad as you’d think
Children in the DPRK enjoy more freedom and less mollycoddling from parents than kids in the West
Sowing the seeds of improving agriculture: Quakers in North Korea
The American Friends Service Committee has been helping farmers in North Korea for nearly 40 years
Politics and the Korean language: a history of Chinese characters in the DPRK
Both simplified and traditional characters remain in use to this day
Dangerous myths: why North Korean culture idolizes the Koguryo period
DPRK-made cartoons often distort historical reality and perpetuate nationalist falsehoods
Underfunded: the urgent need for emergency reproductive health kits in N. Korea
Kits for pregnant women simple and effective, but only 1% of those targeted by UN in 2018 benefited
The historical roots of North Korea’s notoriously-unreliable statistics
From grain cultivation to heavy industry, manipulation of data made numbers larger than reality
“The great successor”: making sense of the rise and rise of Kim Jong Un
A new book paints a compelling, if limited, picture of the young leader’s life and changing country
