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KCNA Japan site isn’t down, it’s geo-blocked
Sometime in early July, the long-time Japan-based site carrying Korean Central News Agency stories became inaccessible. That was bad news because it carried an archive of KCNA stories going back 18 years and each story had a unique URL, which made it perfect to hyperlinking back to previous articles (There are many KCNA links on North…
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End of an era as Tokyo’s Korea Book Center closes
Tokyo’s best source of North Korean books is no more. The Korea Book Center has shuttered its website a month after its physical store was closed. The store in the Hakusan neighborhood was operated by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, better known locally as “Chosen Soren,” and provided a place to pick up…
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A Japanese guidebook to North Korea, from an earlier era
With Japan and North Korea starting to talk again about the abductee issue, there’s a possibility that Japan could lift some of the travel restrictions it currently places on travel between the two countries. That could include a resumption of sailings by the Mangyongbong-92, a passenger and cargo ferry that used to travel between Niigata and Wonsan.…
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KCTV Facebook page deleted, but streams live on
A Facebook page that claimed to be the official home of North’s Korea’s main national TV channel, Korean Central Television, has disappeared. The page appeared to have been around for at least a month and content included links to KCTV news bulletins on the YouTube channel of the China-based Uriminzokkiri website, photos and stories from…
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Live from Pyongyang, it’s KCTV on Facebook … or maybe not
On Thursday, South Korea’s Yonhap reported on a new Facebook page in the name of the Korean Central Television, North Korea’s national TV station. (Updated. See below.) Yonhap said, “North Korea’s state broadcaster started real-time Facebook broadcasting as the communist country moves to expand its propaganda efforts into the social networking realm, official sources said Thursday.” In…
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The importance of data security
When South Korean workers began leaving the Kaesong Industrial Zone a couple of weeks ago, they returned across the border in cars and trucks laden with as much finished merchandise as possible. Plastic-wrapped packages and boxes didn’t just fill the interior of cars but were stacked high on the roof, sometimes even covering the car’s…
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Visiting Tokyo’s Korean Book Center
There aren’t many places in the world outside of North Korea that you can just walk in and peruse DPRK propaganda, but Tokyo’s Korea Book Center is one place that you can. It was a place I never managed to get to when I lived in Tokyo, so I decided to visit last week when…
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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…
