North Korea, land of gulags, government-enforced information blackouts, and humans so hungry they eat other humans, has finally weighed in on the NSA-spying controversy and has become ... an advocate for American civil liberties.
North Korea greeted the weekend by stating through its KCNA news agency that it is entering a "state of war" with South Korea. This seems like much more serious news than an earlier KCNA story about using nutritious leeks in seasonal dishes, but there's reason to be skeptical that NoKo's latest declaration means anything at all.
Propaganda wars aren't new. But with the thoroughness of a first-time B-movie director, Kim Jong-un has assembled the perfect image of a rogue state foil to the U.S. The JPEG War has begun.
Hours after the chest-thumping Air Force leaders flew stealth bombers over South Korea, Kim Jong-Un has ordered North Korea's rocket units to be prepare for an attack on American bases.
So we know North Korea has a habit of puffing its chest and it feels like Kim Jong-Un's country declares the annihilation of its enemies seemingly every other day now. But with the U.S. announcing that they're practicing stealth bombing runs over the Korean peninsula, it's a sign that the U.S. is taking those threats seriously.
We didn't think it was possible, but the North Koreans found a completely new way to threaten the South—but this one might actually affect the lives of some people who live below the DMZ.
Just in case no one understood them after all those other threats, the North Koreans announced today that their army is now on "combat duty posture No. 1." And the Spaniard behind the world's most ubiquitous propaganda machine is ready to explain.
North Korean citizens are apparently "happy with pride and honor that they have one of the best systems for promotion and protection of human rights in the world," according to the country's envoy to the U.N. That, apparently, was not enough to convince the U.N., which wants to establish a commission to look into the way the country treats its people.
It seems like every day now that North Korea has some sort of threat, warning, accusation, or other message to send about the "flames of justice" they are ready to hand out to anyone who messes with them. Today brings two potential targets.
The web servers of three television networks and three major banks in South Korea were brought down by cyber attacks earlier today and, naturally, the first suspected culprit is North Korean hackers.
The land once governed by Sarah Palin may yet yield more riches: protection from North Korea's likely nonexistent nuclear missiles. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Friday that the Pentagon is adding 14 missile-interceptors to Alaska's Fort Greely base at the cost of about $1 billion, pending Congressional approval.
At a time of heightened awareness — and with U.S. and South Korean militaries in the middle of war games — North Korea has apparently decided that now would be the perfect time to start testing missiles.
In the ongoing international spat over which country deploys the most evil cyber hackers, North Korea is lobbing accusations that the United States and South Korea took down the nation's webservers.
With the nuclear test and Kim Jong-Un's crazy statements about "breaking waists," things are obviously heating up with North Korea. It's cool, though, because the Pentagon is ready with buckets of water to throw on this fire.
Yes, Kim Jong-un's state news agencies have been even more absurd than usual lately. But, no, North Korea did not film, produce, and distribute a four-and-a-half-minute propaganda film depicting the harrowing lives of Americans forced to eat snow and live in tents as the country around them collapses.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
The country's propaganda campaign against its neighbors and America continues to ratchet up — it's now calling the brand-new president of South Korea a nagging "prostitute," and it may have released another anti-U.S. video — but that's actually a mild improvement.
With North Korea continuing to agitating things with their enemies to the South, Kim Jong-un is doing his best to prepare his troops to break some waists.
After last week's threat to call off their armistice with South Korea, officials disconnected the hotline built to avert disaster.
Colbert declared that North Korea's bizarre video showing a man dreaming about the destruction of New York to the tune of "We Are the World" proves that "we are in a dreams race." What with Pyongyang's recent threats and all, he retaliated with a dream of his own.
As the U.N. Security Council prepares to vote on harsh new sanctions against North Korea, that nation's military has found a way to take its fighting words to yet another hyperbolic level.
The military command of North Korea says that if South Korea and the United States don't cancel their joint military exercises by March 11, they can consider that whole 60-year-old armistice agreement totally over.
One of the best parts about crazy North Korea news is the way things are portrayed in their media. This was never more evident than in that awesome video of the North Korea anchorwoman announcing the rocket launch. But here, right now, we have another masterpiece of North Korean propaganda. This 15 minute news recap of Dennis Rodman's trip to Pyongyang is kind of amazing.
Dennis Rodman's sojourn to North Korea may have displeased those who take issue with Kim Jong-Un's commitment to prison camps and expressed desire to destroy America, but he's found support from at least one sympathetic countryman.
Failed Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney's first official interview since losing aired on Sunday. Guess what? He totally thought he was going to win, until, y'know, he lost.
Paul Krugman on Ben Bernanke vs. the man, Yochai Benkler on the Bradley Manning case, Jonathan DeHart on Dennis Rodman in North Korea, Michael O'Hanlon on intervention beyond Syria, and David Min on government-backed mortgages.
Vice has released the first pictures of Dennis Rodman and North Korea's Supreme Leader from their basketball date on Thursday — the first signs of the couple's apparent life-long friendship.
He's on a mission with the Harlem Globetrotters for "basketball diplomacy," but North Korea claimed its nuclear weapons were "within the range" of the United States the morning after he arrived.
An analysis of satellite images suggests that at least one North Korean prison camp has been significantly expanded over the past decade, including since the death of former premier Kim Jong-Il.
This is especially distressing considering what we learned yesterday. The U.S. tried to repair their broken relationship with North Korea after Kim Jong-Il died. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.
It's rare that our friends from North Korea actually pick up the phone and give the ol' U.S. a call. But according to reports in their local media that's exactly what they did. Oh, and did we mention it was to warn the U.S. they would meet a "miserable destruction"?
New satellite images of the nuclear test site in North Korea shows an uptick in activity for the first time since the country's third nuclear test on February 12, stirring fears that a fourth test is imminent.
In today's tour of state-sponsored propaganda: the link between video games and Korea's propaganda factory, how the end of Olympic wrestling brought Iran and the U.S. together, and China cracks down on food — not hackers.
Tourism in North Korea has "steadily increased" over the last decade, according to a report from North Korea's propaganda machine — a report that came on the same day that a North Korean diplomat called for the "final destruction" of South Korea.
Bill McKibben on the Keystone XL pipeline, David Brooks on the shortcomings of big data, William Pesek on China's North Korean neighbors, Scott Winship on the robot economy, and Jonah Goldberg on liberal Hollywood.
North Korea says it wants to conduct one or two more nuclear tests this year in order to force the United States into diplomatic talks — by doing the exact opposite of what the United States wants them to.
David Ignatius on Obama's optimistic State of the Union, Maureen Dowd on Rubio's response, James Hohmann on issues that should concern Democrats, Fred Kaplan on the President's vague foreign policy, and Simon Jenkins on the senselessness of sanctions.
Tuesday's test has the world calling for a strong response, but the world can't negotiate with North Korea, because the world doesn't have anything North Korea wants.
International officials have confirmed that North Korea conducted its third nuclear weapons test on Tuesday, and that the rogue state may be hinting at more tests to come. Check here for all the latest updates.
Based on this new picture, people, including a South Korean intelligence agency, have concluded that North Korea's supreme leader uses an HTC smartphone.
North Korea likes to drop hints about wanting to annihilate the United States, but just to make it clear, they've produced a helpful propaganda film to show exactly how that's going to go down.
Not satisfied with upsetting the entire world with a new nuclear weapons test, there's now speculation that North Korea may be planning two tests, possibly back-to-back or even simultaneously.
Want one more sign that North Korea is getting closer to their third nuclear test? They've started to camouflage and cover the entrance to an underground nuclear testing tunnel at the Punggye-ri facility so that no one can see what they're doing.
There are two countries in this world that we'd rather not see tinker with nuclear energy: Iran and North Korea. And it just so happens one of those is now prepping for a nuclear test, while the other is bragging about how it's putting its own program into overdrive.
South Korea has successfully put a homegrown satellite into orbit for the first time in the country's history, officials say. Now, who's going to break the bad news to their big bad neighbors to the North?
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Thanks to citizen cartographers, Google was able to fill in what was what one of the last blank spaces on earth. And now we can see things like North Korean mass transit routes, the Pyongyang's parks and of course, the country's gigantic gulags.
News out of North Korean is notoriously unreliable, but food shortages in the country have gotten so bad and people so desperate that there are now reports of men murdering their own children for food.
Late Wednesday night, North Korea's National Defense Commission announced that it planned several more rocket launches as well as a nuclear test. It also threatened a "full-fledged confrontation" with the United States.
With more and more defectors heading south, the North Korean regime spent $1.66 million on over 16,000 border-security cameras in the first 11 months of 2012, as it continues to build a spy network on its own citizens.
The United Nations wants to remind everyone that while the world was busy worrying about North Korea's terrible nuclear missiles they were ignoring North Korea's even more terrible human rights abuses.
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