SEOUL, March 6 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korea has canceled the annual Pyongyang Marathon due to the coronavirus pandemic, a tour agency has said. The event, officially known as the Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon, was scheduled to be held in the North’s capital from April 5-11. “The 2021 Pyongyang Marathon has been officially canceled,” Koryo [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korean kindergartens and elementary schools have started to use robots for education. Voice of Korea, Pyongyang’s state-run radio station, posted a video on its official website on Thursday in which students were seen speaking to a robot while looking up at the robot’s ‘face’, or scanning cards with the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korea’s state media have used “president” as the official English title of leader Kim Jong-un, instead of the previous title of “chairman,” in what experts see as intended to rev up the image of a “normal state.” The North’s Korean Central News Agency used the new title for [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Over six out of 10 South Korean youth think that unification with North Korea is necessary, a survey showed Tuesday. In a survey conducted by the education and unification ministries on 68,750 students enrolled in elementary, middle and high schools nationwide from Nov. 2-30 of last year, 62.4 percent [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of North Koreans defecting to South Korea dropped sharply last year apparently due to the North’s border closure to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus, government data showed Wednesday. According to the data provided by the unification ministry, a total of 229 North Koreans settled down in [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea is expected to carry out underwater tests of a home-grown submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) this year, having concluded ground tests, a source said Wednesday. South Korea is developing an SLBM based on the home-grown ground-to-ground Hyunmoo-2B ballistic missile with a flight range of around 500 kilometers. It [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korean officials participating in the ongoing party congress were seen wearing face masks in their latest meetings for the first time since its opening last week, raising questions over its standards on antivirus guidelines. Photos released by state media on Tuesday showed North Korean officials in blue face [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — YouTube has banned multiple channels suspected of being run by North Korea. A YouTube channel named Echo of Truth Returns had been used as a North Korean propaganda outlet before it was removed from YouTube on Friday. “The account was deleted for violating Google’s terms of service,” said YouTube. [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — The demotion of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister at an ongoing party congress is raising questions over whether it signals any change in her status in the top echelons of power. During the sixth-day session of the party’s eighth congress in Pyongyang on Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, the [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s remarks on South Korea during a key party meeting appear to have passed the ball into Seoul’s court by attaching challenging conditions that portend cloudy prospects for any change in the currently chilled cross-border relations, experts said Saturday. During the fourth-day session at the [...]