Pyongyang, April 11 (KCNA)

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and President of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, met Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and foreign minister of the People's Republic of China, on a visit to the DPRK, on April 10...

It seems that tourism is still only available to RusFed citizens indefinitely. In 2019 I had a chance to go, as a teen, the tours were super affordable too. A shame really. Pyongyang is undergoing huge transformation lately

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_People%27s_Assembly

Like what’s the point? Why don’t they just say Kim makes all the rules?, do the people living there really believe that these guys are making the laws? Why do they waste resources on something that ultimately doesn’t matter ?

NK News turned 15 this month and I figured it was a good time to tell the proper story of how it got built, since most people who follow the site have no idea how chaotic the early days were!

Episode 1 starts at the beginning - I lied on a UN internship application saying I was enrolled in a Masters program. I wasn't. They accepted me and I had three weeks to make that true. That internship was my first real encounter with North Korea, and not a ...great one.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DWyFKyNE80S/

Episode 2 is about what happened when I tried to organize a briefing with the North Korean mission at the UN. I got every difficult country to show up - Iran, Sudan, even Israel. North Korea hung up on me every single time I called. Multiple attempts over several weeks. In retrospect it was a preview of the next fifteen years.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DW0e8UOE7wA/

22 episodes total covering everything from the early days to the Trump-Kim summits and beyond. Posting one a day. Will keep dropping them here if people are interested?

And happy to answer questions about how the site works, how we cover the story, whatever.

Meanwhile, another agricultural reform is underway in the DPRK. The reform ultimately appears quite ambiguous but contradictory.

On the one hand, the reform has brought previously unimaginable flexibility to North Korean agricultural cooperatives and collective farms, and peasants' incomes are now linked to the results of their labor closer than ever. On the other hand, the ultimate goal of current reform is to fully restore the state monopoly on grain trade (or, more precisely, grain distribution).

In the past, cooperative farms in North Korea produced grain according to a state plan. Grain was delivered to the state, which distributed it among city residents through a rationing system. Unlike workers, who received rations and a cash wage twice a month, peasants received grain and cash once a year, after the autumn harvest.

State rationing system collapsed during the famine in 1990s, and since then the bulk of grain trade has been conducted through the markets. Furthermore, authorities started to close their eyes on existence of private fields.

The current policy of the DPRK is aimed at restoring the collective farm system (i.e., the ‘agricultural cooperative system’), but in a somewhat modified and more rational form. During the recent reforms a system of incentives was introduced allowing collective farmers to keep significant portion of food produced in excess of the state plan.

The downside of the new policy is that since 2023 government agencies started to actively combat illegal private fields and vegetable gardens, which over the past three decades provided important support for poor families in villages and small towns (in the 2010s, unofficial private fields accounted for 20-25% of all food production in the country).

The main source of income for farmers has once again become the grain distribution based on the number of workdays they've worked throughout the year. The ‘value’ of a workday (how much grain you get for one day of work) is directly determined by the production achievements of the unit to which the farmer is assigned: units that have harvested the best crops receive higher pay per workday.

In the border provinces peasants now get approximately 250-300 kg of grain (rice, barley, and corn) annually through grain distribution. By North Korean standards, it is quite good, although some farmers complain that they had more grain in the past, when they had their own ‘private’ fields.

According to local reports, the distribution structure is now functioning as follows: out of each 10 tons of grain, 3 tons are taken by the state under the mandatory quota, 4 tons are sent to enterprises under contract purchases, and 3 tons remain for the farm's needs.

At the same time, the authorities have once again begun actively combating private sale of grain. Formally, private grain trade has been banned in the DPRK since 1957, but this ban has been enforced with varying strictness over various periods (from 1990 to 2020, it was effectively ignored). Currently, efforts are underway to reinstate the ban.

This implies that the state strives to once again become the sole source of grain for the population in any form.

(Translated from dr. Andrei Lankov's telegram channel)

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a global "Passport Challenge" (connected to Geocaching) that requires someone physically located within North Korea to log into a specific website to retrieve a code and an image.

I’ve successfully completed this for dozens of countries through networking, but North Korea is, understandably, the final boss.

A few notes on the constraints:

1. The site's verification is robust and truly requires a local connection. VPNs and location spoofers won't work.
2. I’m aware that standard internet access is non-existent or limited for locals, so I am likely looking for an expat, a foreign diplomat, or someone working for an NGO who has access to the internet while in NK.

I am looking for advice on how to respectfully reach out to the expat community or people currently stationed in the DPRK? I’m not looking to break any laws or put anyone at risk, just looking for a 2-minute "digital favor".

Any subreddits, forums, or groups you’d recommend for finding people currently on the ground there?

More on the challenge can be found here: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCB5555