Ask me about North Korea

For quite some time I have been meaning to talk about how people travel to North Korea – not for diplomatic or political purposes, but just as ordinary tourists or business people. Even though I could have recorded a more or less standard episode in my attempt to answer that questions, I thought that perhaps there could be a more interesting way of telling you about this...

People fleeing from North Korea are not a new phenomenon. Since the division of Korea after the end of the Korean War, citizens of the DPRK have fled from their country for not only political or ideological, but also economic and personal reasons. So, the area from which my question stems is quite well-studied – there have been hundreds of interviews, media reports, memoirs, and research articles written in this area...

Today we continue with discussing the impressions of the people, who travelled to North Korea back in the pre-COVID era. In this episode, Mr. Vitaly Konovalov, who went to the DPRK in 2009 for professional purposes, shares his experiences of staying in that reclusive authoritarian state and draws parallels between the North Korea of 2009 and Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.

Moscow is often seen, similar to Beijing, as one of the key allies of the North Korean regime. Yet politics and history of the Russia-North Korea relations have vacillated from strategic importance to complete indifference – and the pendulum would swing back and forth every other decade. The Korean Peninsula, which lies as the Eastern-most border with Russia, has remained in the focus of Russia's and USSR’s geopolitical attention throughout the twentieth century...

While the human rights problem in North Korea is rather well-documented and well-studied, in this episode I wanted to provide you with a quick introduction on the topic; suggest some follow-up readings; and, most importantly, reflect on how the situation became so bad in the first place. After all, the human rights situation in that country is a good reminder for all of us about why North Korea is not something funny.

There are not that many things that both North and South Korea have in common. Yet football is one of them. Given the love of the game in both countries, football can also be a powerful diplomatic tool in inter-Korean relations as well as a gate for North Koreans to the outside world. In today’s episode, I will talk about the history and peculiarities of contemporary North Korean football at the request of one of my listeners, Carl Stewart from Northumberland.

After having produced quite a number of podcast episodes, I wanted to reflect a little bit exactly on the subject of my exploits – North Korean studies. Thus, in this episode, I will be doing what I do best – complaining. Specifically, I would like to tell you about all the issues that North Korea watchers like me have to face in their research. Perhaps if any of you ever get interested in this field or choose to conduct their own projects, you might find my ramblings somewhat useful.

Today I would like to do some news coverage from the past week. If some of you have been following the news on North Korea, South Korea, or the United States, you most likely know that a major meeting between the US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in took place on May 21. Why did they meet in the first place, why does it matter, and will it change anything in the relations of both countries with North Korea?