The following Research Review contains a summary of the article “Changes in North Korea’s Financial System During the Kim Jong Un Era: Based on North Korean Literature,” co-authored by Minjung Kim and Sung Min Moon of the Bank of Korea. In this Research Review, Minjung Kim, an economist in the Economic Research Institute at Bank of Korea, dis...

Although South Korean and North Korean comedies both originated from theatrical features of the Japanese colonial era, the two comedies have diverged into distinct forms of art after the Korean War. In this Special Report, Young Jeong Park, Adjunct Professor at the University of North Korean Studies, compares and contrasts comedies of the two Korea...

Notwithstanding explicit warnings of the U.S. and its European allies, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th. In this Commentary, Yang Gyu Kim, Executive Director at the East Asia Institute (EAI), identifies the Russia-Ukraine war as a case of deterrence failure from the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s perspective. He p...

Notwithstanding United Nations prohibitions on ballistic and nuclear weapons tests, North Korea has continuously been on a streak of weapons proliferation. In this commentary, Hyeong Jung Park, Emeritus Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), analyzes the intentions of the unusually high number of tests, looking into...

According to the “White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2021,” human-trafficking targeted at North Korean defectors in China remains a grave issue – not only are North Korean women sold without their consent, but they are also forced to prostitution at entertainment establishments. In this commentary, Eunyoung Christina Choi, Senior Fell...

Under the context in which studies on North Korea continue to be led and dominated by Western institutions, the East Asia Institute (President Yul Sohn) operates its English-based website as an alternative to Western-led research on North Korea. The project aims to promote a more balanced perspective on the subject and conduct in-depth research on ...

Notwithstanding an international ban on ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests, Pyongyang has launched seven ballistic missiles since January 2022. In this Special Report, Cheol-Wun Jang, Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, lays out the status of North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and the implications ...

Initially imported from Japan, the concept of naturalism has had a complex history on the war-torn terrain of the Korean peninsula. In this Special Report, Kab-Woo Koo, Professor at the University of North Korean Studies, discusses the different ways in which South and North Korean governments and literary circles received the literary concept of n...

Global NK Zoom & Connect has met with leading South Korean researchers who study North Korea and listened to their voices to understand current research on North Korea. For this issue, we interviewed Young-Sun Ha (Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the East Asia Institute and Professor Emeritus at Seoul National University). Based on the public s...

In the absence of Kim Jong Un’s New Years Speech, Young-sun Ha, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the East Asia Institute and Professor Emeritus at Seoul National University, states that we can deduce what North Korea has in mind for 2022 through his speech, “On the Orientation of the Work of the Party and State for 2022.” Despite the “t...