Stephen Haggard (UCSD) and Marcus Noland (PIIE): Repression and Punishment in North Korea: Survey Evidence of Prison Camp Experiences. From Asia Times, Pepe Escobar on North Korea, the last frontier of the Cold War. Kim Kyong-Hui, Kim Jong-Il's only sister, appears to be wielding more power in North Korea after making a comeback to the frontline of the regime last year. As North Korea's Dear Leader celebrates his birthday, it's worth asking what plans the US has for Pyongyang once he's gone — turns out, Washington doesn't have much. North Korea is calling for a new peace treaty with the US — what is really going on here? As the North looks to China to save it from collapse, Beijing is playing the North Korean card against the US. If it wasn’t for the sheer misery of most of its luckless inhabitants, wouldn’t the world be a duller place without North Korea? The comic books that brainwash North Koreans: Mighty Wing, Pyongyang's equivalent of Mickey Mouse, is a honeybee that confronts a swarm of capitalist wasps. BR Myers collects rare slides of North Korean propaganda posters, which illustrate the eerie mythology the government wants its impoverished people to believe. A review of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters by BR Myers (and more and more and more) and Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (and more and more and more and more and more) and The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom by Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh (and more and more and more) Frogs in a Well: An article on literary life in North Korea. Matchmaking services connecting North Korean women and South Korean men are helping ease the transition to a new life for some defectors.
