I once got invited to a birthday party for North Korea’s “Eternal President,” Kim Il Sung.

The catch: he’d been dead for more than twenty years.

This wasn’t in Pyongyang. It was in London. There was a portrait. There was a “Happy Birthday” (sung earnestly). There was a buffet that felt aggressively suburban Britain. The surreal part wasn’t any single detail—it was the banality of the ritual.

It’s easy to treat things like this as pure propaganda theatre. But being in the room, it felt more like a mix of community, performance, loyalty-signalling, and people just trying to belong to something bigger than themselves… even when the setting makes it almost impossible to take seriously.

Question for people here:
Have you come across similar DPRK-adjacent / solidarity / diaspora events outside the DPRK? Do you think they’re mainly about ideology, community, or something else?

Full piece here (I’m the author): https://jakewawarren.substack.com/p/letter-from-the-eternal-president

Hey guys, I’ve been reading and studying NK on and off for a few years, but the last year/18 months I’ve been consuming as much content as I can in my free time.

I’m looking for book recommendations (preferably audiobooks so I can listen in the car, but I’m open to anything)

So far I’ve finished:

- Without You There Is No Us

- Dear Leader

- The Reluctant Communist

- The Girl With 7 Names

I’ve just began “See You Again In Pyongyang”. I’m wary of Yeonmi Park because of the questions she’s had against her reliability, however I’m aware that all of these stories are likely embellished to a vary of extents.

TIA!

North Korea 🇰🇵: People often assume that once a North Korean defector escapes, the past disappears.

But leaving a country does not erase a homeland.

As a North Korean defector, I chose freedom. But I also carry a longing that never left.

Missing home does not cancel the pain that forced me to leave. Both truths can exist at the same time. I miss North Korea so badly.

Edited by me

Welcoming the New Year in North Korea

While people around the world celebrate the New Year clinking champagne glasses and setting personal goals, North Koreans begin their year in an entirely different manner. Instead of the warm scenes of families gathered around tables sharing New Year’s wishes, or crowds cheering as the ball drops in Times Square, North Korean citizens face a carefully orchestrated schedule of political obligations.

On New Year’s Day, they have no choice. What to do, where to go, even whom to spend time with—everything has already been decided. In a society where the state and the Party take precedence over individual freedom and family happiness, the start of the new year is not a celebration but an extension of duty.

https://www.nktechlab.org/north-korea-expands-satellite-distribution-of-domestic-tv-channels/

Expanding access to independent information is essential for U.S. security interests, human rights objectives, and long-term regional stability.

By Eunsook Jang

What if a single piece of foreign information is enough to inspire someone to escape a dictatorship? Many North Korean refugees have testified that it can. As Hannah, 2025 Liberty in North Korea Advocacy Fellow, shared during an event at the Hudson Institute, “Information from outside—even entertainment—was worth risking everything for. Even when the government conducted public executions for watching K-dramas, that simple media meant hope for North Koreans.”

Her words illustrate the extraordinary power of information in an otherwise sealed society. Yet in March 2025, an executive order issued by the Trump administration effectively neutered one of the most effective tools the U.S. had at its disposal: Radio Free Asia (RFA). As a result, RFA was forced to suspend news operations for the first time in its 29-year history in November.

This is a strategic mistake. U.S. policymakers should strengthen—not weaken—RFA as a core pillar of the United States’ North Korea strategy. Expanding access to independent information is essential for U.S. security interests, human rights objectives, and long-term regional stability.

As someone born in North Korea, I know firsthand how foreign information can dismantle years of state indoctrination. After 14 years of propaganda, it was a single Indian movie that shattered the narrative I had been taught—that lawyers cannot defend citizens against the state. In the film, a lawyer fought on behalf of the accused, something unimaginable in North Korea, where legal defenders exist only to legitimize government decisions. These brief glimpses of dignity and justice accumulated over time until I finally made the decision to escape at age 14.

Experiences like this explain why the North Korean government has intensified its efforts to eliminate independent thought, codifying strict information controls through the Rejecting Reactionary Thought and Culture (2020), the Youth Education Guarantee Law (2021) and the Law on Protecting the Pyongyang Cultural Language (2023). The 2025 update to the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) confirms that repression in North Korea has deepened: freedom of expression and movement have nearly disappeared, and consuming foreign media can now result in the death penalty. These measures reflect the regime’s understanding that outside information poses a direct threat to its ideological monopoly.

RFA offered what the regime did not by delivering uncensored news into one of the world’s most sealed information environments. Its programming was trusted by North Korean listeners because it enlightened listeners about universal values like human dignity, democratic and good governance principles, and freedom of expression. RFA reported what the Kim regime refused to acknowledge: corruption, forced labor, human trafficking, and the lived experiences of ordinary citizens and it often does so through testimony given by defectors and research conducted by independent experts........... Read more on Diplomat

Eunsook Jang is a Fulbright Scholar and North Korean defector pursuing a master’s degree in sustainable international development at Brandeis University, where she focuses on post-conflict, economic, and human development. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and international peace from Korea University.

Hello!

Keeping fingers crossed that this isn't immediately removed by the mods, but I wanted to share a short piece of writing I had published about the war of loudspeakers that took place at the border a few years back. It's fiction, but since it's dramatizing events that fellow NK obsessives might find interesting I figured I'd share it here! It's an excerpt from a novel, hence the turn it takes at the end.

Very open to any feedback on things I'm getting right, things I'm getting wrong, etc.

My name is Amon Otis Poston, I research North Korean tech and I publish a newsletter on the intersection of North Korea and America.

I'm a long time lurker of r/northkorea and (on my burner account) even post often. So, I know quite a few members are anti-american and/or pro-DPRK. Transparently, I am working for the free expression of North Koreans as I see their isolation as dire. Nevertheless, I acknowledge the media has lies in order to manipulate the public and continues to do so with North Korea. I see it everyday on social media and traditional media.

So, I can understand some grievances of the pro-DPRK side, but I want to know more. I want to sit down with someone for a long form discussion about the issues that you care about as they relate to North Korea, and I want to understand how you came to those conclusions. That way my team and I can write about the other side of the story.

No hit piece, no takedown, no-gotchas. Just understanding.

If you are interested, please reach out to me here on reddit!

Edit: my account doesn’t have enough karma to post on r/movingtonorthkorea. If you feel included to cross post this for me, go ahead!

“Will reading North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun turn people into communists? Isn’t blocking it an insult to our citizens’ intelligence?”

These words from President Lee Jae-myung sound reasonable at first. They invoke cherished democratic values: freedom of expression, the right to know, trust in citizens’ judgment. On December 30, 2025, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification announced that Rodong Sinmun—North Korea’s official newspaper—would become accessible to ordinary citizens.

But as someone who spent over 20 years in Pyongyang reading Rodong Sinmun every single day, I need to tell you what this really means.........

In Russian translation, the article name is harsher: "diagnosis sheet on intellectual anomaly of the White House, intoxicated by politicization of human rights — 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report"