North Korea has a population of 26m.
Kim Jong Un is the country's dictator, the third generation of a hereditary dictatorship founded by his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who seized power in 1948 with Josef Stalin's backing. Kim Il Sung was raised in Pyongyang, then known among Western missionaries as "the Jerusalem of the East"; his parents were fervent Presbyterians and he learned to play the organ in chapel. He later brutally suppressed Christians, killing thousands and sending more fleeing south. All North Koreans are taught a set of decrees called the "Ten Principles for the Monolithic Ideology", patterned on the Ten Commandments. Kim's teachings coalesced into Juche (self-reliance), which supplanted Marxism-Leninism as the foundation of the regime. His father, Kim Jong Il, ruled before him. The embalmed bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are on display in glass coffins in Pyongyang, the capital. Kim Jong Un took power in 2011.
Kim Jong Un's daughter, believed to be in her early teens, has appeared frequently at his side since November 2022, when North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. She is often referred to as Kim Ju Ae—information first provided by Dennis Rodman, an American former basketball star, who said he held the baby girl during a visit to Pyongyang in 2013—though a diplomat who recently defected has said her name is actually Kim Ju Ye. Official media refer to her enigmatically as the "respected child" or the "beloved child". During 2022-24 she appeared on North Korean television more than every other day, according to Nikkei, a Japanese newspaper. She has attended a ceremony at the Russian embassy in Pyongyang, accompanied her father on a trip to Beijing, and on New Year's Day 2026 made her first public appearance in the grand mausoleum in Pyongyang that houses the embalmed bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Decorated military officers defer to her; state-media broadcasts have featured pictures of her favourite white horse—a powerful symbol in the Kim Il Sung cult of personality. South Korean officials believe she is Kim Jong Un's most likely successor. He could formalise her status at the next party congress, expected in the coming months. Kim is rumoured also to have a son.
The second-most powerful person in North Korea is Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong. For the first time in its history North Korea has a female foreign minister: Choe Son Hui.
Since late 2023 Kim Jong Un has declared that North Korea no longer seeks reunification with South Korea but instead considers it an enemy, breaking with decades of rhetoric stretching back to Kim Il Sung.
North Korea's partnership with Russia has strengthened markedly. Kim has supported Russia's war against Ukraine with ammunition and troops, receiving food, fuel and technology in return. In 2024 the two countries signed a mutual-defence treaty. Russia has also reportedly provided anti-aircraft missiles and drone technology, and is reported to have agreed to deliver Russian fighter jets. North Korean workers have been sent to earn hard currency on construction sites and assembly lines in Russia. There are 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. In summer 2025 Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, declared after visiting Kim aboard his yacht: "We respect North Korea's aspirations and understand the reasons why it is pursuing nuclear development." China's official summary of Xi Jinping's meeting with Kim in Beijing in September 2025 made no mention of nuclear disarmament, in contrast to the account of their previous meeting in 2019.
Only a handful of foreign embassies have been allowed to resume normal operations since the pandemic—most notably China's and Russia's, but also Poland's and Sweden's. International aid workers were kicked out and have not been allowed back; UN international staff have not been permitted to return since 2020. In early 2024 Russia forced the closure of the UN body monitoring sanctions breaches.
New fences and walls line the border with China. The flow of escapees has slowed to a trickle: from 2015 to 2019 an average of 1,201 North Korean refugees reached South Korea each year; from 2020 to 2024 the annual average fell to just 158. No South Korean humanitarian aid reached the North in 2024, the first time since the South began sending official aid nearly three decades earlier. North Korea has among the highest tuberculosis levels in the world; a privately funded group that helped fight the disease until 2019 has not been invited back.
North Korea has an active domestic tourism industry. Decades of illicit market activity have created a middle class that enjoys excursions, and the regime often rewards employees of "model workplaces", university students and schoolchildren with trips.
In 2019 about 350,000 Chinese tourists visited, each spending around $500, netting the regime roughly $175m in revenues, according to NKNews, a South Korea-based outlet. Some 4,000-5,000 Western tourists also visited every year, paying considerably more per head.
When covid-19 struck, North Korea sealed itself off from the world. Tourists were not allowed back until February 2024. Visits have since been sporadic and mostly for Russians only, though some non-Russian tourists were allowed to visit Rason, in the north, in February 2025.
The Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort, on the Kalma peninsula, opened to North Koreans on July 1st 2025. The peninsula was still being used to test weapons less than a decade earlier. The resort boasts 5km of beaches, cinemas, shopping malls, restaurants and 54 hotels, with rooms for 20,000 visitors. It is designed primarily for domestic tourists rather than foreigners.
Under the "Law on Rejecting Reactionary Thought and Culture" of 2020, no North Korean may consume, possess or distribute the "rotten ideology and culture of hostile forces"—meaning K-dramas, K-pop, and South Korean books, drawings and photographs. Penalties range from forced labour to prison camp to death. In 2022 a 22-year-old farmer was executed for listening to 70 South Korean songs and watching three South Korean films. Human-rights groups report multiple executions under the law.
The "Youth Education Guarantee Law" of 2021 prohibits copying foreign hair and clothing styles and requires parents to ensure their children uphold socialist morals. The "Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law" of 2023 bans South Korean slang, such as women referring to their boyfriends or husbands as oppa (literally "older brother").
Enforcement is increasingly technological. DailyNK, a South Korean news site, smuggled a North Korean smartphone out of the country and found it loaded with state-developed software that automatically takes screenshots accessible only to the authorities and autocorrects ideologically suspect expressions: oppa becomes "comrade" and South Korea is changed to "puppet state".
Despite these penalties, North Koreans avidly watch K-dramas. In a survey of more than 6,000 escapees conducted by South Korea's government in 2023, more than 80% reported having watched Chinese, South Korean or other foreign videos before leaving the North. Friends and relatives share smuggled content on USB drives and memory cards. Some North Koreans living close to the border jailbreak their televisions to pick up broadcasts from China or South Korea. North Korean propaganda once claimed the south was an impoverished, crime-ridden hellscape; South Korean dramas—with their background shots of streets full of cars, meaty meals and luxurious apartments—offer a rebuttal. Enterprising barbers in North Korea have learned to mimic southern hairstyles, and young people often imitate the South Korean way of speaking.
For decades America and South Korea funded radio broadcasts into North Korea; South Korean planes also dropped leaflets describing food abundance and car production in the South. Following Donald Trump's cuts to American public broadcasters, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia went off air. Under Lee Jae-myung, stations linked to the South Korean government went quiet as well. According to an analysis by Martyn Williams of the Stimson Centre, foreign broadcasting aimed at North Korea fell by almost 80% between May and July 2025.
North Koreans consider radio a safer way of getting outside information than smuggled flash drives, which can be intercepted in transit. Radios are easier to hide from authorities than television sets and can operate on batteries—useful in a country short of power.
Free North Korea Radio, founded in 2004 by defector Kim Seong Min, used short-wave to broadcast into North Korea one hour twice a day, relying on a clandestine network of stringers inside the country.
As of late 2025 North Korea is in its best strategic position for 35 years. Almost friendless a few years ago, it now plays China and Russia against one another.
North Korean hackers are prolific cryptocurrency thieves. In February 2025 they stole nearly $1.5bn in the largest cryptocurrency heist in history, and were able to launder almost $100m a day, according to TRM, an investigations firm, probably with the help of Chinese underground bankers.
Following widespread famine caused by central planning failures in the 1990s, North Korea began permitting private markets, or jangmadang, which grew to play an outsize role in the economy. By the early 2010s the country had progressed from "extreme socialism" to "market socialism". North Koreans who came of age after the famine are often called the jangmadang generation. Informal markets account for more than 70% of household income, compared with just 16% in the Soviet Union in 1969-90.
After taking power, Kim Jong Un initially tried to harness market forces, giving more autonomy to farmers and factory bosses. He has since reversed course: merchants face surprise inspections and higher fees, many markets have been closed or had their hours shortened, and individual vendors have been barred from selling staples such as rice. The regime is also cracking down on black-market money-changers who provide the foreign currency that fuels the informal economy. Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, attempted a similar reversal of market reforms and failed.
Between late 2023 and mid-2024 state salaries rose at least ten-fold. But with salaries rising and the supply of goods constrained, inflation has spiked: the black-market won-to-dollar exchange rate has leapt about five-fold in five years. Inequality seems to be growing, with defectors reporting a big gap in public services between Pyongyang and everywhere else.
In 2024 Kim decreed the "20x10 policy for regional development": the construction of industrial plants producing goods for daily life—from garments to foodstuffs—in 20 cities each year for ten years. In Pyongyang he announced a programme in early 2021 to build 50,000 new flats; satellite images reveal many new high-rises, though some South Korean officials suspect they may be Potemkin buildings with unfinished interiors.
China accounts for more than 90% of North Korea's global trade and supplies vast quantities of oil. The country's biggest earner, according to official trade statistics, is human hair for making wigs. Bilateral trade with China plunged to roughly $2.4bn in 2018 after China tightened enforcement of UN sanctions under American pressure, then fell further during the covid-19 pandemic. In the first eight months of 2025 it bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, increasing by 28% year on year to $1.6bn. North Korean workers have been returning to Chinese factories and the country has ramped up coal exports to China—despite UN sanctions targeting both activities. Russia sends large quantities of oil in violation of UN sanctions.
North Korea signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, vowing not to build a bomb in exchange for help with civilian nuclear power. It withdrew in 2003. Kim Jong Un has steadily expanded North Korea's nuclear arsenal and ramped up missile testing. Its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) can now reach the American mainland. Donald Trump has taken to speaking of North Korea as "a nuclear power". In a speech to parliament in November 2025, Kim said he would meet Trump only if he abandons America's "absurd obsession with denuclearisation".
The Korean war has been frozen by armistice since 1953. No formal peace treaty has been signed. Donald Trump has expressed interest in brokering a formal end to the war.
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.