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Voice of Korea still having problems staying on-air
Voice of Korea, the DPRK’s international shortwave radio broadcaster, is still having technical problems that result in entire broadcasts failing to make it on-air. The problems began just over a month ago when some Voice of Korea broadcasts failed to appear at their scheduled times. Now, a month later, the broadcaster is still failing to…
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Pyongyang News website offers archived TV news
A website in Japan has begun offering an archive of several days worth of North Korean TV news broadcasts. [Updated: see below] The Pyongyang News website appears to be affiliated with a handful of sites operated by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (sometimes known as ‘Chosen Soren’ or ‘Chongryon’) (??????????, ??? ??? ????). At…
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AP/KCNA photo exhibit opens in New York
A joint photo exhibition being staged by The Associated Press and the Korean Central News Agency opened at New York’s The 8th Floor gallery this week. The exhibition is one by-product of the AP’s opening of a news bureau in Pyongyang earlier this year and features 79 photographs, including shots from AP photographers, KCNA staffers…
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KCTV adds computer-generated backdrop to evening news
North Korea’s state broadcaster, Korea Central Television, has given its evening news a new look. The changes are small, but represent a leap forward in presentation style for the staid broadcaster. The new look has news readers presenting items in front of a computer-generated background. A graphic to accompany the story appears above the right…
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DPRK radio disappears
Several of North Korea’s external radio services and its powerful jamming operation that blocks foreign broadcasts are having trouble staying on the air. Voice of Korea, the country’s international radio outlet, was missing from several of its scheduled broadcasts on Thursday, according to monitoring from sites in South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Two days…
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Is Rodong Sinmun using South Korean news photos without permission?
Regular readers of The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, might be forgiven for thinking the newspaper has a correspondent in South Korea. The newspaper, now available in English via its website, offers a page of inter-Korean news complete with photographs of demonstrations happening in Seoul. But where are they coming…
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DPRK again at bottom of press freedom ranking
North Korea has again been ranked the second-worst country in the world for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders. The Paris-based organization has consistently ranked the DPRK at the bottom of the world in terms of press freedom for the last decade. “It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that…
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China’s CCTV interviews Ri Chun Hui
China Central Television (CCTV) scored something of a scoop on Monday when it interviewed North Korea’s most influential news anchor woman, Ri Chun Hui, as part of its Lunar New Year programming. The piece, which ran on the CCTV news channel, saw the station’s Pyongyang reporter go inside the Korea Central Television news studio to meet…
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AP opens Pyongyang bureau
The Associated Press has opened a news bureau in Pyongyang making it the first western news agency to have a reporter and photographer based in the North Korean capital. The bureau represents a coup for the AP over the competition, but its close cooperation with the state-run Korean Central News Agency, necessitated to realize the…
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Rodong Sinmun launches English site
Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Workers’ Party of Korea and North Korea’s main national daily, has launched an English-language website. The page appears to have come online in the last few days but has a small archive of stories stretching back to December 1. It’s the first foreign language to be offered by the…
