SEJONG, Dec. 15 (Korea Bizwire) – North Korea’s per capita income was unchanged at 1.39 million won (US$1,179.10) last year, about one twenty-secondth of South Korea’s, government data showed Thursday. According to data by Statistics Korea, North Korea’s nominal gross national income (GNI) came to 34.5 trillion won in 2015, with its moribund economy contracting [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Kang Chun-hyok, a 31-year-old born in North Hamgyong Province, escaped North Korea in 1998 with his family and was granted asylum in the South in 2001. His vision and new life in South Korea has been somewhat different from other North Korean defectors residing here – he was determined [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean-made pharmaceutical products remain widely popular in “Jangmadang,” or North Korea’s unofficial provincial markets, even though the distribution of goods from the South is under strict control in the communist state, a U.S.-based broadcaster said Monday. A source in the North’s North Hamkyong Province told Radio Free Asia [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 7 (Korea Bizwire) – Military investigators looking into the first hacking of South Korea’s cyber command intranet said Wednesday the suspected North Korean attackers accessed the network through a server at the armed forces’ main information center. The findings raised concerns that confidential information may have been compromised as the affected server is [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 6 (Korea Bizwire) – North Korea and Cuba reaffirmed their friendly ties as a senior North Korean official visited Havana to attend Fidel Castro’s memorial service, Pyongyang’s media said Tuesday. Choe Ryong-hae, a vice chairman of the ruling party’s central committee, met with Cuba’s leader Raul Castro on Saturday during his visit to [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – The U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions this week on North Korea, putting a stricter cap on the country’s exports of coal as well as copper, nickel, silver, and zinc. Interestingly, the sanctions also include exports of statues, apparently one of the key sources of income for North Korea, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea unveiled a set of its own punitive measures against North Korea on Friday, blacklisting scores of people and entities suspected of supporting the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The move came days after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 2321 on Wednesday condemning [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – North Korea on Monday began a three-day mourning period to pay tribute to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Pyongyang’s state media said, as it calls him the “close friend and comrade” of North Koreans. The decision was made by the ruling party’s central committee, the presidium of the Supreme [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea on Sunday unveiled a set of measures to better support North Korean defectors, including ways to help them find work in the public sector, as their total number here has surpassed the 30,000 mark. The Ministry of Unification announced a seven-point plan to help defectors better integrate [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea is developing a technology to bring down unmanned North Korean aircraft using electromagnetic pulse (EMP), military officials said Sunday. According to the officials, the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) has developed a directional, high-powered EMP generator, and it’s trying to devise ways to use it against small [...]