North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Year-end special: A look back at the most compelling North Korea stories of 2024

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

In this special year-end episode, the NK News podcast revisits the most compelling North Korea stories of the year, as told by the reporters who covered them. NK News journalists discuss everything from the DPRK’s Olympic glory and inter-Korean border construction to South Korea’s late-night martial law, while sharing firsthand experiences reporting their favorite features […]

Hello, listeners, and welcome to a special end of year episode of the NK News Podcast. This episode will go live as it were on Thursday, December 26, 2024. As we wrap up another fascinating and fast-paced year of reporting on all things North Korea, we're shaking things up today with a unique format for this episode. Instead of our usual interviews, we're bringing the NK News team together one by one to reflect on the most interesting, impactful, and surprising stories of the year. So to create this episode, I've interviewed my NK News journalist colleagues one at a time to see what stories they found the most interesting, and our producer Gabby will stitch these together into one episode for you to enjoy to see at the end of the

year. So a big thanks to Gabby for her hard work. From groundbreaking investigations and on-the-ground analysis to the moments that took us and the world by surprise this year has been filled with developments that demand a second look. So sit back and relax and join us for this retrospective journey through the year that was. Let's dive into the stories that define 2024 as told by the reporters who know them best. But before we do, I want to thank all of you listeners for subscribing to this podcast throughout the year and for subscribing to NK News or NK Pro so that you can enjoy the full episodes each week as well as our archive of hundreds of past episodes. I've been doing this podcast series now since February 2018, so soon it'll be seven years and nothing makes me prouder professionally and personally than this collective attempt to understand and make sense of North Korea.

I'd like to personally ask each of you to share this podcast and the website nknews.org with someone who you think might be interested or who might benefit from listening to and reading our output. And also if you know someone who has a fascinating story to tell about North Korea or some knowledge to share that hasn't been shared yet, feel free to get in touch with us at podcast at nknews.org and recommend that guest. All right, thanks. And here we go. Our first guest in the studio is Anton Sokolin.

Anton, welcome back. Hey, Jokohario. I'm fine, thanks. So let's talk about the stories that you found interesting. And you've done something a little bit different. You've chosen not a hard or sort of a heavy political topic and not even a story that you yourself have written tell us how you'd like to begin so first of all I would like to congratulate our colleagues on our very hard work covering all the stories this

year it's been a very intense year and it was very full of stories covering all kinds of political angles, different, we had multiple investigations and different stories analyzing North Korea in depth. But trying to find a different angle, I also wanted to bring to the spotlight some new stories, some stories that maybe are not as hardcore, maybe is not as political, but still are very interesting. And one of the stories was written by my former colleague, Joe Smith.

Hello Joe, if you're listening. Hello, shout out to you. I hope you are listening actually. And he wrote this fascinating story. He sat down with a German soccer coach to actually learn about his story and his experience of going to North Korea and actually coaching a North Korean football club.

When was he there? It was in 2016. It was years back, but still it's a fascinating story. It literally could be turned into a movie and that's why it piqued my attention because it's a story about a man who was approached by this club and they asked him to go to North Korea to take their to sign a contract with them to join the club and actually coach the whole team but the conditions there were slightly different from what he got used to and He's been he had been living before in Japan for many years and it's a bit of a contrast there in the environment

The approach of course the different approach different style of coaching we can talk about for example that it is It's no it's no secret actually that in South Korea and North Korea the approach to football to soccer is a bit more Let's say systematic more more rigid and more control-based. And it's very similar, it reminds military structure. And well, in his particular case, this football club was actually belonged, it was affiliated with the military. So it added another extra layer of complication,

I would say, to the environment. And yet he decided to go for the first time to see, to observe the team. And of course, you can all read about it in the article itself, but it could be literally turned into a movie because it shows a man's journey from one environment to another, exploring a different side of North Korea

that many of us would never know, living in the actual country and actually interacting with North Korean athletes. It's something not many of us can actually, it's an experience that not many of us can get actually. So that's what picked my interest and I believe you all guys should read it because it's this Christmas season and we're all looking for fun and nice stories. This one could be one and it is titled a job like none other. Now, he's a German coach. So is he coaching in German and somebody, maybe a North Korean is translating that into Korean?

So the operation, yeah, it was very interesting how it functioned. He was basically accompanied by a North Korean interpreter at all times. And that's what actually edited, when I was talking about this complicated environment, it actually also contributed to it because it sort of felt like he was under surveillance pretty much at all times. And of course, it's a bit stressful living conditions, interacting with this military style organization, being always controlled by either bureaucrats or your own interpreter. That of course adds to the stress of the job.

How long did he last? Oh, not very long, not very long, because he didn't end, signing the contract with the team because of the conditions. On the second thought, he got to learn that he had certain health issues that were likely caused by being there in this very stressful environment. So in the end, he ended up not signing, but still his stories are very worth sharing and we are bringing it all to you. All right, thanks Anton. Okay, what's your second story for this year?

My second story, I also wanted to focus on something more artistic and something more, something under explored or something that sheds more light on North Korean at a slightly different angle. And it's one actually, my story, one of my stories that I wrote earlier this year, it is about this South Korean, French graphic novelist, an artist, Kim Sook-Jeon-Ri Kim, who wrote this fascinating graphic novel about the North Korean dictator, leader Kim Jong-un, and then entitled the story, My Friend Kim Jong-un, in which she

tries to explore the growth and the career, the life of Kim Jong-un and how he became, who he became, and starting with his childhood and trying to juxtapose it with her own experience of living abroad and being Korean and having certain similarities, cultural similarities. She brings a lot of personal experience to the story because your mother, for example, she has a sister who was left behind in North Korea during the war. So there is a lot of that and Jenner Kim tries to explore this side of things. And also she tries to understand where are we headed with Kim Jong-un, right? Are we headed towards a new conflict and how do we mitigate this conflict?

She actually I would like to commend her for doing a great journalistic work because she also interviewed lots of experts and even at some point she even met former president Moon Jae-in to hear his perspective, to understand what's going on on the peninsula, what he did right, what he did wrong, where were his shortcomings, what were the shortcomings of the US administration, of his administration, what Kim Jong-un did. And it indeed provides us with a nice glimpse into how a regular person can view the situation and feel as a South Korean person and what their feelings are about the division, about ever growing conflicts and escalations that

we see sometimes on the peninsula. And one other thing I wanted to kind of comment about, comment on about this story is the is the fact that Jen Drew Kim when she wrote it she really complained that a lot of right-wing people people with let's say right wing kind of mindset they they tried to attack her verbally but still there was this backlash where people would criticize how could you put for example Kim Jong-un's face on the cover of your book and call him your friend. And given what's happening right now when we are in South Korea,

we are having this divide between the lefties and righties, it's... I think it's even more important to kind of bring this book into the public discourse. And I strongly recommend everyone to take a look at it. Is it only available in Korean? So far it is available in Korean, but actually in several other languages. Okay. But in English, I think it will be published if I'm not wrong, in next year.

Okay, and how is the artwork? Because I haven't actually seen this book. You know, I love graphic novels about and from North Korea, but this one's one that I missed. So how's the artwork? Of course, this is fantastic. Jen Rickim is not a novice in this. She had multiple graphic novels while some of them are award-winning like Grass and The Waiting. So I strongly recommend checking out her work in general and this in particular. Some snippets of your artwork you can find in my article we included some of your original artwork so please check it out what's the title of your story my story is called from boy to dictator and then of course my friend friend Kim Jong-un and you can look it up just like that want the full story become an NK News member to continue listening to the

complete episode packed with insights analysis and everything you love about the NK News podcast. Head to nknews.org slash join for more information about how you can access the full conversation along with the latest news on North Korea.