FILE PHOTO: A DVD and mp4 player used in North Korea. (Daily NK) Four unemployed young men in Sinuiju, North Pyongan province, were sentenced to labor training after North Korean authorities caught them watching South Korean and Chinese films and dramas during a surprise inspection of a private home. Because the men did not distribute the videos and most of the confiscated content turned out to be Chinese rather than South Korean, they received a comparatively lenient punishment. A source in North Pyongan province told Daily NK on Monday that four men in their 20s living in Ryonsang neighborhood, Sinuiju, were arrested last month after a three-member team enforcing North Korea’s crackdown on “non-socialist and anti-socialist” behavior burst into a home where the men had gathered in broad daylight to watch South Korean and Chinese movies and dramas. All four had been out of work for more than six months....

FILE PHOTO: North Korean cash. (Daily NK) A growing number of people in rural North Korea are converting their spare cash into U.S. dollars or Chinese yuan, as fears grow that the North Korean won is rapidly losing value, Daily NK has learned. Even in farming communities that once showed little interest in foreign currency, the belief that holding onto North Korean won “means taking a loss” is spreading. According to a Daily NK source in North Pyongan province on Wednesday, people in rural areas such as Ryongchon and Tongchang counties have increasingly been traveling to nearby cities to exchange even small amounts of North Korean won for dollars or yuan. Even when the sum is small, people believe holding foreign currency, rather than the domestic won, better protects the value of their savings. In the past, farming communities had little occasion to use foreign currency in everyday transactions, making...

A 30-seat bus belonging to a North Korean trading company is seen crossing the Chinese side of the New Yalu River Bridge toward Sinuiju, North Pyongan province, around 2 p.m. on June 27. | Image: Daily NK Heavy rain in Sinuiju has disrupted cross-border cargo truck traffic between North Korea and China, further cooling Chinese investment sentiment that had been building around the anticipated opening of the New Yalu River Bridge, a China-funded crossing linking Sinuiju and Dandong that has stood largely unused since its completion in 2014. Cargo trucks traveling between Dandong in China’s Liaoning province and Sinuiju in North Korea’s North Pyongan province stopped running for more than two days starting Aug. 24, a source in North Korea told Daily NK on Friday. “Trucks that had entered North Korea before Aug. 24 could not return to China, and new trucks could not enter either,” the source said. “There...

Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea’s official newspaper, published photos on July 31, 2024, showing leader Kim Jong Un touring flood-damaged areas of Sinuiju city and Uiju county in North Pyongan province. / Image: Rodong Sinmun, News1 Sinuiju, the North Pyongan province city that suffered catastrophic flood damage in the summer of 2024, is underwater again, this time because a short burst of intense rain overwhelmed the city’s weak drainage system rather than the Yalu River overflowing its banks. With low-lying neighborhoods submerged and power and water cut off, the flooding has become the latest sign of how fragile North Korea’s urban infrastructure remains against extreme weather. According to a Daily NK source in North Pyongan province who spoke Thursday, heavy rain pounded the Sinuiju area on Aug. 23 and 24. The downpour briefly let up on Aug. 25 before picking up again overnight into Aug. 26. “During...

Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, reported on Nov. 15, 2024, that Kim Jong Un toured a local industrial factory construction site in Jaeryong county, South Hwanghae province, the day before. The paper said Kim inspected construction progress and equipment production and assembly at food and daily necessities factory sites there. North Korea’s Ministry of Defense has ordered a monthlong special inspection by military prosecutors after reports surfaced that soldiers deployed to rural construction sites are suffering severe malnutrition, with rear-service officials accused of stealing the food, clothing and medicine meant for the troops. A source in South Pyongan province told Daily NK on Tuesday that, on orders from the Ministry of Defense, the Military Prosecutors’ Office launched a large scale special inspection on Aug. 14 targeting the rear-service departments, the logistics units responsible for supplies, of People’s Army units deployed to regional development construction...

Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, reported that the 2026 New Year Celebratory Performance was held successfully at Pyongyang’s Rungrado 1st of May Stadium on Jan. 1. / Photo: Rodong Sinmun, News1 So-called “dance tutoring” is becoming popular among North Korean teenagers, as slick performance videos of singers dancing in formation with dynamic choreography catch young people’s eyes and turn modern dance into a new field of private education. “Demand has grown sharply among young people in Sinuiju to learn modern dance with fast paced moves,” a source in North Pyongan province told Daily NK on Tuesday. “Watching far more lively and flashy performances on television and recorded videos than before has spread learning modern dance like a fad.” Dance tutoring is drawing demand in particular because it costs less than other forms of private education. “Compared with specialized skills like foreign languages or computers, private...

A North Korean traffic police officer in blue uniform directs traffic on a main street in Pyongyang, standing next to a police patrol car with emergency lights. The scene shows typical urban traffic including public buses and private vehicles in North Korea’s capital city. Photo taken in 2018 during the inter-Korean summit. (Korea Summit Press Pool) Three low ranking managers at a car management office in Pyongyang have been referred to prosecutors on charges of secretly renting out state owned vehicles to private business people for profit, Daily NK has learned. A source in Pyongyang told Daily NK on Wednesday that the three, employees of the Mangyongdae Motor Vehicle Office, are accused of secretly renting out state vehicles that came into the office’s possession to private donju, North Korea’s class of informally wealthy entrepreneurs, from May to July and pocketing large sums of cash in return. The three reportedly avoided...

Apartment buildings in Pyongyang. (Todd Mecklem, Creative Commons, Flickr) Apartment prices in one of Pyongyang’s newer housing districts have fallen from about $70,000 to roughly $60,000, and sales have slowed sharply, as a cash crunch and a steady stream of new construction cool the North Korean capital’s informal housing market. “Homes that used to go for $70,000 now sell for as little as $60,000. Until last year there were still people buying and selling, but this year that’s dropped off a lot,” said the source, a Daily NK contact in Pyongyang familiar with the apartment market in the Songsin-Songhwa district, also known as Songhwa Street. Pyongyang continues to add large numbers of new apartments, but the informal housing market is showing a different trend than before. Weaker cash flow in the wider economy, combined with the growing supply of new apartments, is pushing down prices for some newly built homes...

North Koreans working in the fields in North Hamgyong Province. Image (June 2019): Daily NK Bribes for the travel certificates North Koreans need to move between regions have jumped sharply in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong province, and the government’s own crackdown on corruption is partly to blame for pushing the price up. A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK that bribes for travel certificates in Hoeryong now range from a minimum of 500 Chinese yuan to as much as 2,000 yuan. “In the past, one or two cartons of cigarettes were enough, but now you have to hand over at least 500 yuan,” the source said, adding that the jump is making it harder for lower income people to travel at all. On Aug. 14, one person paid an official 1,500 yuan while applying for a travel certificate to travel inland for business. In the past, a single carton...

Satellite imagery shows yellow-tinted mine drainage spreading from North Korea’s Bupo mine toward farmland and a saltworks in South Hwanghae province’s Kangnyong county, with the contaminated runoff reaching waterways connected to Kangnyong Bay and raising concerns it could eventually leak into the Yellow Sea. The mine’s drainage flows toward the Bupo reservoir and nearby farmland, likely affecting soil and water quality along the way. If the runoff reaches the Bupo saltworks, it could also disrupt salt production there. Of particular note, the tidal flat waterways near the mine connect to Kangnyong Bay through drainage sluice gates on the coastal embankment, raising the likelihood that the mine’s drainage is reaching the sea. Pollutants that flow into the Yellow Sea through Kangnyong Bay could spread to surrounding waters under the influence of tides and coastal currents. Whether the contamination actually reaches South Korean waters such as Gyeonggi Bay, however, would require verification...