North Korea sent me abroad to be a secret IT worker. My wages funded the regime

Beth Godwin and Julie Yoonnyung LeeBBC Trending & BBC News ShareSave Jin-su says over the years he used hundreds of fake IDs to apply for remote IT work with Western companies. It was part of a vast undercover scheme to raise funds for North...

North Korea's opened its doors to Russian tourists. So... how was their holiday?

The world's most secretive state is a mystery for billions of people - but not Anastasiya Samsonova. She has returned from a week's holiday in North Korea. "We saw nothing terrible there, there is no danger there," the 33-year-old HR manager tells...

Wow: Russia Launches Regular Nonstop Boeing 777 Flights To North Korea

Russia's Nordwind Airlines has launched direct, nonstop flights connecting the Russian capital with North Korea. The journey takes about eight hours to complete and covers a distance of nearly 4,000 miles (6,400 km). Initially, flights are...

North Korea’s Air Travel Relic: Where the 1950s Still Fly

North Korea is a nation like no other—and its civil aviation system is no exception. It remains the only country in the world where aircraft long retired elsewhere still regularly take to the skies. These include relics like the Il-18, a Soviet...

Authoritarian Leisure: North Korea’s Wonsan-Kalma Tourism Project in Comparative Perspective

(Source: Korean Central News Agency) Domestic Reorientation, Background, and Implications The recent opening of the Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort in the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or North Korea) has prompted questions about the...

North Korea Remains Stable Amid Increased Emphasis on Party Discipline, Some Governance Anomalies, and Daughter’s Growing Prominence

This article is from the first edition (April-June 2025) of 38 North’s new quarterly product, North Korea Briefing, that monitors key internal developments in North Korea. For the full series, click here. (Source: Korean Central News Agency)...

N. Korea secretly buries Ukraine war dead alongside Korean war heroes

When North Korea honored fallen Korean War heroes at a Victory Day ceremony last week, the regime quietly slipped in something unprecedented: the remains of soldiers killed fighting in Ukraine. While the Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun...

Former Soviet state is showing signs it’s ready for more tourists

ASHGABAT - When the Turkmenistan government announced new streamlined visa regulations in April, people familiar with traveling to the Central Asian nation were unsure what to make of it. Not that there are many such experts — along with North...

US, S. Korea reaffirm commitment to N. Korean denuclearization

U.S. and South Korean trade officials hold talks in Washington on July 29, 2025. (Yonhap/Kyodo) WASHINGTON (Kyodo) -- U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday reaffirmed with his South Korean counterpart Cho Hyun their countries' "resolute...

Denuclearization of North Korea ‘a pipe-dream’

Will the Donald J Trump administration re-initiate its first- term nuclear diplomacy towards North Korea and seek to disarm it? Observers say any attempt to denuclearize North Korea will at best be a “a pipe-dream”. The Trump presidency still...

North Korea’s Kim dismisses Trump’s overtures and demands the U.S. accept it as a nuclear power

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dismissed the U.S.’s intent to resume diplomacy on North Korea’s denuclearization, as she urged Washington to accept her country as a nuclear weapons state and find a new approach to restart...

N. Korea pushes winter tourism with China ahead of party congress

North Korea is taking concrete steps to boost tourism with China to meet growing demand for winter festivals and sports. “At the end of June, Kim Jong Un suddenly ordered various Cabinet departments to promote new projects that would qualitatively...

North Korea-Russia alliance more than a ‘brotherhood of arms’

The three-day visit earlier this month of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan marked a noticeable intensification of a strategic relationship between the two neighbors. The sheer trappings of the...

New beach resort opens in North Korea for local tourists

Kim Yo-jong's statements suggest North Korea wants to define terms of engagement with South, U.S.

Published: 30 Jul. 2025, 21:45 Updated: 30 Jul. 2025, 21:49 Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, center, smiles as she shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Capella...

South Korea eyes tourism growth and potential reopening of individual tours to North

South Korea’s tourism rebounds with 8.83 million visitors as government considers resuming individual North Korea tours to ease inter-Korean tensions. South Korea recorded a significant rebound in inbound tourism in the first half of 2025,...

Trump exodus. Travellers of all kinds avoiding the US, going elsewhere

Australian visitors to the US in June were down 11% on the previous year, following a similar collapse in visitors from other countries of nearly 12% in March. Andrew Gardiner reports. When corporates and academics cut back in uncertain times,...

North Korea bars foreigners from newly opened beach resort

North Koreans have begun visiting the newly opened Wonsan-Kalma beach resort, a state-run complex said to accommodate up to 20,000 people, according to official media. Foreign tourists remain barred, with Pyongyang announcing a ban last week...

North Korea increases imports of beach resort goods as part of tourism revival drive

Published: 29 Jul. 2025, 18:01 Updated: 29 Jul. 2025, 18:29 Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI A screen capture from Korean Central Television (KCTV) shows crowds of workers visiting the Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area, which is...

North Korea opens new beach resort to locals but bans foreign tourists

Last updated: 21 minutes ago Foreign tourists remain barred, with Pyongyang announcing a ban last week despite earlier praise from leader Kim Jong Un, who called the resort “one of the greatest successes this year.” But the scope of the ban...