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NK News Executive Director Jeongmin Kim joins the podcast to discuss the story of a North Korean defector in her 70s who is under investigation for allegedly leaking the locations of fellow escapees to Pyongyang’s secret police, as well as the daring maritime defection of a North Korean who swam across the Han River estuary. She also talks about the recent decision by South Korea and the U.S. to postpone half of their summertime Ulchi Freedom Shield drills and the latest on the dismantling of propaganda loudspeaker arrays along the inter-Korean border. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insights from our very own journalists.
On this week’s episode, Maeng Hyo-shim, a young woman who fled North Korea in 2018, joins the podcast to share her experiences of state discrimination, systemic neglect and a violent attack against her disabled mother which led her family to escape the DPRK. Born in Hyesan in 2001, Maeng shares her memories of life growing up under the Kim regime, where people with disabilities were routinely excluded from society and punished for being unable to work in state-run enterprises. She reflects on the hardships her family faced due to her mother’s condition, how her parents met and raised her despite overwhelming odds. Maeng Hyo-shim was born in Hyesan, a city on North Korea’s northern border with China, in the years after the devastating famine of the 1990s. In 2018, she fled North Korea with her parents after a violent incident against her mother who has a disability and the regime’s refusal to deliver justice. She now lives in South Korea and works to raise awareness about human rights issues in North Korea, testifying publicly under her real name — including at the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights in Seoul in June this year. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists. NK News subscribers can listen to this and other exclusive episodes from their preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide at nknews.org/private-feed.
On this week’s episode, NK News Data Analyst Anton Sokolin unpacks major construction updates on the Russia–DPRK car bridge project near the Tumen River. He also breaks down the ambitious trilateral initiative to launch historical boat tours connecting China, Russia and North Korea along the same river as well as new direct flights between Moscow and Pyongyang and a Russian military aircraft’s mysterious trip to the DPRK. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists.
The flurry of summitry in 2018-19 between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in inspired hopes for a breakthrough on resolving a decades-old conflict, only for talks to collapse without any progress on the DPRK nuclear issue. This week, historian John Delury returns to the podcast to revisit that heady time on the Korean Peninsula and explore what Seoul’s new President Lee Jae-myung might do to revive Trump-Kim diplomacy. He explains why Russia-DPRK ties ensure that another round of engagement won’t look like the last and examines how China’s ties with the South impact its approach to the North. He also talks about Kim Jong Un’s desire to be a “developmental dictator,” the potential impact of the U.S. bombing of Iran on efforts to entice Pyongyang to negotiations and why there is no military solution to the North Korea problem. John Delury is a historian of modern China and an expert on U.S.-China relations and Korean Peninsula affairs. The author of “Agents of Subversion,” he previously served as a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul and most recently taught at the American Academy in Rome, Luiss University and John Cabot University. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists. NK News subscribers can listen to this and other exclusive episodes from their preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide at nknews.org/private-feed.
North Korea broke its relative silence about the new South Korean administration of Lee Jae-myung on Monday, with the DPRK leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong dismissing the president’s peace overtures and attacking Seoul’s alliance with the U.S. NK News Lead Correspondent Shreyas Reddy joins the podcast to discuss why North Korea’s proverbial “bad cop” suddenly weighed in on inter-Korean ties and what Pyongyang actually wants from Seoul. He also talks about new U.S. sanctions against a DPRK company and three North Koreans for their role in remote IT worker schemes, as well as a surprise visit to Pyongyang by a global baseball chief. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists.
North Korea’s ruling Kim family has orchestrated not one but two leadership successions during its over seven decades in power, and may well be preparing for a third. But the success of such transitions in authoritarian states is far from certain and depends in large part on how rulers manage the elites that compose their power base, a new book argues. This week, researchers Edward Goldring and Peter Ward join the podcast to discuss their new volume about the tools that the Kim family dictatorship has used to facilitate leadership transitions. They explore how successors must rely on their predecessor’s power base to govern while building their own inner circle of elites, and they explain why autocrats don’t necessarily want to use forceful means like purges to exert control. Ward also talks about a forthcoming paper that digs into the ways in which South Korean society discriminates against North Korean defectors despite a pervasive belief in a Korean ethnic identity, as well as about a second upcoming paper on the factors that make North Koreans more likely to consume ROK media in violation of state censorship laws. Edward Goldring is a lecturer in comparative politics in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, and Peter Ward is a research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul. They are the co-authors of the new book “Authoritarian Survival and Leadership Succession in North Korea and Beyond” from Cambridge University Press. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists. NK News subscribers can listen to this and other exclusive episodes from their preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide at nknews.org/private-feed.
South Korea’s National Assembly questioned the Lee administration’s nominees for key positions last week, including the ministers of unification, defense, foreign affairs and labor, and North Korea issues ended up playing a prominent role at all of the hearings. NK News Correspondent Joon Ha Park joins the podcast this week to discuss the main takeaways from the hearing, and to explain why the question of whether Pyongyang is the South’s main enemy repeatedly came up. He also talks about unification minister nominee’s claims about North Korea's semiconductor plants and AI ambitions, the labor minister nominee’s grilling over a request to attend Kim Jong Il’s funeral and the defense minister’s plan to carry out OPCON transfer from the U.S. to South Korea. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists.
In this episode, Professor Andrei Lankov and NK News’ Anton Sokolin discuss the fascinating story of the Yankovskys — a Russian family whose journey took them from Siberian exile to colonial Korea, and ultimately, to the heart of North Korea's tumultuous 20th-century history. The discussion centers on the family’s time in what became the DPRK after relocating from Siberia, where they ran a tiger hunting resort in the northern region, near Chongjin. They also explore how the family's story intersects with the shifting allegiances of North Korea, highlighting their relationship with the regime and how it shaped their survival in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. Andrei Lankov is a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and the director at Korea Risk Group. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists. NK News subscribers can listen to this and other exclusive episodes from their preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide at nknews.org/private-feed.
NK News Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko joins this week’s episode to discuss Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s high-profile visit to the newly opened Wonsan Kalma beach resort, where he met Kim Jong Un aboard a luxury yacht. He also dissects emerging signs that North Korea is preparing for a military parade and possible mass games to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea this October, while unpacking claims — now largely debunked — that the DPRK released radioactive wastewater into the Han River estuary. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists.
Dr. Shinyong Kwon joins this week’s episode to discuss how neighborhood associations — known today as inminban in the DPRK — have been used as tools of governance, social indoctrination and moral authority. She explains how these associations originated from East Asian communal traditions but were reshaped under Japanese colonial rule to serve wartime mobilization and state control and traces how both Koreas retained and adapted the system post-liberation. Dr. Shinyoung Kwon holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago and did postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge. She now lives in the United States. Her book Moral Authoritarianism: Neighborhood Associations in the Three Koreas, 1931–1972 was published in November 2023. About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists. NK News subscribers can listen to this and other exclusive episodes from their preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide at nknews.org/private-feed.
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