Los Angeles Times - North Koreans Seeing the S-Word - - Putting items on sale suggest a new eagerness to make money, which can only mean that profit has become a motive in Kim Jong Il's "socialist paradise." [Free registration required.] (February 6, 2006)

Los Angeles Times - Glimpses of a Hermit Nation - - Expose using the city of Chongjin as a case example of a slowly changing North Korea. [Free registration required.] (July 3, 2005)

Asia Times Online - North Korea's Antique Food Rationing - - Describes the history and de facto collapse of the North Korean government's Public Distribution System (PDS) which rationed food for a majority of its people. (January 15, 2005)

BBC News - N Korea Envoys 'Smuggled Drugs' - - Turkey deports two North Korean diplomats accused of smuggling amphetamine pills into the country. (December 9, 2004)

Asia Times - Cracks in North Korean 'Stalinism' - - Documents how the major peculiarities of Stalinism are slowly disappearing from North Korea, and how the "Hermit Kingdom" is not as hermetic as the government would like. (December 7, 2004)

Korea Times - Situation Remains Bleak for North Koreans - - Describes the increasingly hard times in the country as slowly leading to some reforms, but their effect is difficult to measure. (May 20, 2004)

CNN Factsheet - One of the World's Most Secretive Nations - - North Korea is one of the world's most authoritarian and secretive nations, with an economy in dire straits after decades of mismanagement. (April 23, 2004)