North Korea: What We Know About the World's Most Closed Country
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North Korea is the most information-restricted country on earth. What we know about life inside it comes primarily from defectors — over 34,000 of whom have reached South Korea since the Korean War — from satellite imagery, from the accounts of rare foreign visitors, and from the state-produced media that the government distributes. From these sources, a picture emerges of a society organised around the complete authority of the Kim family dynasty and a ideology called Juche — self-reliance — that was developed by the state founder Kim Il-sung and has been maintained by his descendants.
The landscape, as photographed from space, is striking: North Korea at night is almost entirely dark, surrounded by the lit coastlines of China and South Korea. Agricultural land covers much of the country, and the mountains of the north — including Paektu-san, a volcanic mountain considered sacred by Koreans on both sides of the border — are spectacular in satellite imagery. The physical country is ancient and beautiful. What human life is like within it remains largely opaque to the outside world.
Defectors describe a society of remarkable complexity beneath the official narrative: informal markets that operate despite being officially discouraged, a black market economy for foreign films and music distributed on USB drives, family bonds that operate with intense loyalty within the constraints of the system, and a people who — like people everywhere — find ways to love, celebrate, grieve, and tell stories within the conditions they are given. North Korea is not simply its government. The people are distinct from the system that governs them.
