North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s new skyscraper street, rejecting drone claims and defector numbers

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week for another new 10,000-home skyscraper street in Pyongyang, coinciding with the April 15 “Day of the Sun” holiday celebrating the birth of state founder Kim Il Sung. NK News Correspondent Joon Ha Park joins the podcast to discuss the significance of the […]

Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast evolving political, business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs thanks to our new subscription packages. Starting at just $199 annually you can access daily analysis and our weekly podcast. Or try our premium membership package which offers additional perks such as executive briefings, monthly reports and forecasts, networking receptions and event opportunities,

as well as much, much more. To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.careerpro.org and become a member today. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Hoes-Wetsut and this is the Tuesday episode, but recorded on Monday afternoon, the 21st of April 2025. And I welcome in the studio, Junha Park. Welcome back in the studio. Thank you. What shall we start with today?

Yeah, so Kim Jong-un made an appearance just last week on April 15th and it was reported to coincide with the day of the sun. They're still calling it that? Yeah. to coincide with the day of the Sun. They're still calling it that? Yeah, so the significant holiday in North Korea that marks Kim Il-sung, the state founder's 113th birth anniversary this year. And the sinking of the Titanic. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Oh, wow, did not know that. Same day. And featured a ribbon cutting ceremony in Pyongyang for the third phase of the Hwasong District Housing Project that was consisted of 10,000 new high-rise apartments. Is this part of the big nationwide plan or is this separate? Yeah, so it was part of the 50,000 apartment initiative that was announced initially at the Eighth Party Congress in 2021 if my memory serves, and it was aimed at resolving Pyongyang's housing shortages. And what's that other plan that they've got

where they choose, what is it, 50 cities and 10 years or something, I forgot. The 2010. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. So it was sort of seen, well, the 2021 Eighth Party Congress initiative, the 50,000 apartment initiative, it was seen as sort of this major effort by Kim Jong-un to showcase his economic development, to improve the quality of life under his leadership. And it shows that it was built with support

from both military and civilian labor forces. So it represents quite a large scale, full country mobilization effort. You had 10,000 apartments in what, a year? It's a pretty quick time. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so he opened that. Any idea from the story who's going to be living there? Well, it just looks like it's just the Hwasong district families that used to live there. Without Kim Jong-un, he expressed regret for the delays and the housing delivery He said he was well, he was meeting with some of the people. He did not make the speech at the event

He just did the whole ribbon cutting but he expressed regret later afterwards when he was personally greeting some of the District residents he was saying he was sorry to provide the modern apartment houses only now reportedly according to Rodong Shinmun and He framed the housing as sort of a gift to the people. Because housing technically is provided free by the state, right? Yeah, and he sort of used this moment to reaffirm his commitment, shall we say, to improving

citizens' livelihoods. I'd love to see inside one of those new apartments. It'd be interesting to look around. Yeah. Okay, what's our second story today? Yeah. So the, uh, something that came up just last week, actually, and, uh, it was reported by, uh, the South Korean media, but also our NK News correspondent, Jooheon Kim, uh, he also wrote another story about, uh, the UN aviation body, the ICAO, uh, rejecting the North Korean complaint over the alleged drone intrusion. This is the one where the drone was over the skies of Pyongyang, dropping some anti-state

leaflets back in September, October? October, I think. And so initially, as you just mentioned, it was the October case where Pyongyang was suddenly accusing the Republic of Korea of flying a reconnaissance drone and dropping anti-regime leaflets over the city of Pyongyang, the capital. And it turns out that the decision was quite unanimous among the ICAO members. So no action was required according to the South Korean Ministry, Foreign Ministry official that talked to us.

And the DPRK's allegations were as follows. The North Koreans, they claimed that a South Korean unmanned aerial vehicle, it flew over Pyongyang multiple times in October as I just mentioned, they labeled the incident as sort of a grave infringement as I quote of national sovereignty and military provocation and sort of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff they declined to confirm nor deny the allegations that came out at the time. Yeah, remember, they've never changed that stance, have they?

No, they haven't. It's interesting that North Korea has chosen to go to the UN authorities and make a formal complaint. I don't know if they've ever done that before, but that is an unusual case to rather than take it up directly with South Korea to go to the... Is it also, I wonder, part of this recognizing South Korea as a separate state by doing that? Well, I don't think that we can go into interpretations of whether this was just going into the fact that we're looking at South Korea as just a separate state as a whole.

But at the same time, I think it's good to note that what you just said is that with North Korea trying to go to an international organization, trying to make South Korea look like the perpetrator, make themselves look like the victim and demanding a fact-finding investigation when no proof has been given on either on the South Korean side. I think that the UN command, it confirmed initially back in October, I believe, that it was looking into the incident as a potential violation of the Korean War Arms Disagreement, but it's yet to release any findings as well. Did the ICAO announce why, give a reason why it decided not to look into this? Well, the ICAO's rejection sort of stands as I said before it's they didn't give a

decision or an explanation of their decision. They just said that it was a unanimous decision among all of the members in Chicago, and they said that no action was required. Hmm. Okay. Interesting. We haven't had any major drone incursions since then, so let's just see what happens this year. All right. What's our third story today? Yeah. So 38 North Korean refugees,

they entered the southern part of the peninsula in the first quarter of 2025, so this year. And most were young adults, interestingly. And they arrived in South Korea between January and March of this year. And the total includes 37 women and one male, according to the, yeah. Just to clarify, they did not cross the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, right?

They've come from third countries. Yes. So they had, well, nearly all had fled the DPRK before COVID-19. And then they waited quite a number of years to reach the Republic of Korea. And instead, they arrived, as you just mentioned, via third countries, often after spending over five years abroad, according to the article, especially in China or Southeast Asia. And that's now, I guess, the case

and going to be a pattern for most of the defectors coming to South Korea. It's very hard to exit North Korea now because of the increase of foreigners across the border. So yeah, they're mostly people who've been out of North Korea for a while. Why young adults? I mean, why not family groups or older people? What's going on there? Yeah, so it does seem that some experts have sort of opinions on that. And they've said

that young people are more likely due to defect because of lower familial responsibilities, greater willingness to take risks. These sort of years abroad that led to deeper familiarity with South Korean culture, through the media exposure in China and Southeast Asia, sort of reinforced their desire to resettle in the South. And sort of these cultural crackdowns in the North were also cited as the DPRK has intensified quite a number of efforts to punish the access

to foreign media, especially South Korean dramas, the music and the like. And these crackdowns are driven by concern over the youth's disillusionment and increasing sort of ideological, quote unquote, contamination. It's interesting that this is, I guess, the third different wave of refugees from North Korea. For the first few decades from 1953 after the war until the late 1990s. It was almost exclusively male soldiers by

themselves leaving mostly across the border or swimming or taking a boat and then from the mid to late 90s you know after the the big famine it was largely family groups or women with children and now we're seeing another change to a third wave of mostly young adults coming. Yeah. And another sort of statistic that we can look into or set of statistics that we can look into that sort of describes these trends is that there's sort of this gender disparity with defectors. And as of the end of 2024, and as we can see in the results that I just mentioned right

now, nine out of 10 are women. So 72% of all defectors in South Korea are women as of the end of 2024. And something to give sort of explainer on that is that women are allowed to more easily blend in China, especially regions like Yanbian, which has a large ethnic Korean population. Women more often find work in restaurants and service jobs, so it makes survival a lot more feasible than males.

It's also true that women are more often trafficked into China from North Korea, either as brides or as worse situations. Indeed, and that is quite a human rights concern that's continuously voiced by the human rights groups here. And in contrast, the men, they face sort of higher risks due to, or what's quoted as deeper ties to state institutions, increased surveillance and limited options to disappear from their sort of informal economies.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. So 38 North Korean refugees. That's a little bit less than this time last year. It was still very much lower numbers than there were before. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What else we got? Yeah. So the last story that sort of wanted to just brief on is there was a report from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, CHIDA, and it was a report authored by, if I can get his name right, Park Yong-Han, who was a senior researcher. And the main findings that they got was there was an overview of military partnership between Russia and the DPRK. And what they found was that North Korea earned

or an estimated 20 billion dollars of military support from military support to Russia. Now that's fascinating because always it's always hard to get any accurate statistics on the North Korean economy. So 20 billion dollars, it's not a massive amount to a country like South Korea, but it is a massive amount to the North Korean economy. How do they get to this number? Are they using shadow statistics or things like

that? So they did give quite a significant breakdown. So the breakdown of the DPRK's earnings from Russia or estimated earnings, as to say, was $19.2 billion from munitions and supply shipments from the DPRK to Russia, sorry, from Russia to the DPRK, $630 million from technology transfers and $280 million from manpower contributions. Okay, and manpower contributions means what salaries paid to North Korean soldiers who are in Russia. Well, I think that the notes from the report that said about the manpower contribution was,

so it was the $280 million that were given to the North Korean government to spend for themselves on the manpower contributions, i.e. like sort of sending troops to Kursk region, sending troops to support the Russian cause in Ukraine, let's say, yeah. Wow, okay, 20 billion. Now, of course, under United Nations sanctions, to support the Russian cause in Ukraine, let's say. Wow, okay, 20 billion.

Now, of course, under United Nations sanctions, at least some of that would be illegal, right? Yeah, so it does sort of give a lot of international concern as to the security and the strategic partnership that goes on between Russia and the DPRK. Right now, as we all know, the DPRK's troops, they only receive, I think it was $2,000 a month of salary, plus a one-time bonus.

And approximately around 11,000, 11,000 North Korean soldiers are reportedly deployed to support Russia at the moment. So this sort of compensation sort of appears to involve some barter or in-kind exchanges rather than like sort of direct cash transfers. Okay. And some of the rest goes to the state, right?

I think we saw that before with the KSOM industrial complex and some of that money ended up in the hands of the North Korean state. Okay, well, 20 billion, let's keep an eye on that. Lastly, I just up in the hands of the North Korean state. Yeah. Okay. Wow. 20 billion. Let's keep an eye on that.

Lastly, I just saw in the last hour or two, I was informed that Pope Francis, the head of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, has passed away. He did say back in 2022 that he would like to visit Pyongyang if invited. Of course, North Korea at that stage was in a complete lockdown because of COVID. He never got the invitation. So I guess he will not be going out in his lifetime. So it's up to the next pope, whoever he may be, to see whether more overtures are made to visit Pyongyang in the future.

Let's hope so. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much, Junot, for coming on the show. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. Best sellers unveiled at NK News Shop. Step out in style with our top selling apparel from the NK News Shop.

Fly high with the Air Koryo T-shirt celebrating DPRK's golden era of aviation in vintage airline chic. Explore the stars with our Nada hoodie inspired by North Korea's answer to NASA. and chic. again, that's shop.nknews.org. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.