Nov. 5 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against eight individuals and two entities accused of laundering proceeds from North Korean cybercrime and information technology worker fraud schemes that help fund Pyongyang’s weapons programs.
The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Tuesday that North Korea has stolen more than $3 billion over the past three years, using sophisticated techniques such as advanced malware and social engineering to breach financial systems and cryptocurrency platforms.
“North Korean state-sponsored hackers steal and launder money to fund the regime’s nuclear weapons program,” Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John K. Hurley said in a statement. “By generating revenue for Pyongyang’s weapons development, these actors directly threaten U.S. and global security.”
Hurley added that the Treasury is “identifying and disrupting the facilitators and enablers behind these schemes to cut off the DPRK’s illicit revenue streams.”
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.
Among those sanctioned are Jang Kuk Chol and Ho Jong Son, North Korean bankers who allegedly helped manage illicit funds, including $5.3 million in cryptocurrency — some of it linked to ransomware that has previously targeted U.S. victims.
Korea Mangyongdae Computer Technology Co. and its president U Yong Su were also added to the list. The company allegedly operates IT-worker delegations from the Chinese cities of Shenyang and Dandong.
Ryujong Credit Bank, another target, was accused of laundering foreign-currency earnings and moving funds for sanctioned North Korean entities. Six additional individuals were designated for facilitating money transfers.
Under the sanctions, all property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities within U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally barred from engaging in transactions with them. Financial institutions dealing with the sanctioned parties may also face enforcement actions.
The move builds on earlier U.S. actions this year against North Korean cyber networks. In July, the State Department sanctioned Song Kum Hyok, a member of the Andariel hacking group, for operating remote IT-worker schemes that funneled wages back to Pyongyang.
The Justice Department also filed criminal charges in 16 states against participants in a campaign that placed North Korean IT workers in U.S. companies.
Tuesday’s OFAC statement cited an October report by the 11-country Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, which described North Korea’s cybercrime apparatus as “a full-spectrum, national program operating at a sophistication approaching the cyber programs of China and Russia.”
The report added that “nearly all the DPRK’s malicious cyber activity, cybercrime, laundering and IT work is carried out under the supervision, direction and for the benefit of entities sanctioned by the United Nations for their role in the DPRK’s unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs.”
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers Tuesday that a summit could take place after joint U.S.-South Korean military drills scheduled for March, according to opposition lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun of the People Power Party.
SEOUL, Oct. 20 (UPI) — Fewer South Koreans than ever say their country should reunify with North Korea, according to a new survey released Monday, reflecting a growing acceptance of permanent division and deepening public indifference toward the North.
Just 49% of South Koreans said unification is necessary, the survey by the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification found. The figure represents a drop of 3.8% from last year and marks the lowest level since the Seoul-based think tank began its annual poll in 2014.
It is the first time support has fallen below a majority, representing what researchers called a “structural shift” in how South Koreans view the decades-old goal of national reunification.
“These results suggest that perceptions of the necessity of unification have entered a phase of structural change, rather than short-term fluctuation,” the report’s executive summary said. “The decline appears to reflect the compounded effects of North Korea’s hostile ‘two-states’ claim, the continued suspension of inter-Korean relations and domestic political dynamics.”
KINU noted that the decline cuts across all age groups but is most pronounced among younger generations, many of whom see North Korea as a separate state rather than part of a divided homeland.
Some 63.2% of respondents said unification was not needed if the two Koreas could maintain peaceful coexistence, the highest level recorded since the question was introduced nine years ago. At the same time, 47% agreed that “it is better to stay divided as we are now,” reflecting what KINU described as a normalization of both peaceful and “hostile” coexistence.
“The rising preference for hostile coexistence does not indicate a desire for conflict but rather a psychological inclination to maintain the status quo in the face of uncertain change,” the report said.
The survey also found indifference toward North Korea at a record high, with 68% of respondents saying they had little or no interest in the North, up sharply from about 51% in 2015. The trend has persisted regardless of political ideology or shifts in inter-Korean ties, KINU said.
South Koreans still favor limited engagement, however. Nearly 70% backed sports and cultural exchanges with the North, and 54% supported continued economic cooperation even during political tensions. Support for another inter-Korean summit remained high at 69%, including a majority of conservatives.
Support for humanitarian aid took a negative turn this year, with 39.5% against compared to 36.8% in favor — a shift that KINU linked to perceptions that North Korea’s economic conditions have improved amid strengthening ties with Russia and China.
The administration of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has made efforts to rehabilitate relations between the two Koreas since he took office in June, with conciliatory gestures such as removing propaganda loudspeakers from border areas.
Last week, Seoul resumed an excavation project for the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War at a battle site near the inter-Korean border, in what the military called “a practical measure to transform the DMZ into a zone of peace.”
South Korea has banned citizens from going to parts of Cambodia amid growing concerns over the country’s scam industry.
Dozens of South Korean nationals who had been detained in Cambodia for alleged involvement in cyberscam operations have been returned home and placed under arrest, according to South Korean authorities.
Officers arrested the individuals on board a chartered flight sent to collect them from Cambodia, a South Korean police official told the AFP news agency.
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“A total of 64 nationals just arrived at the Incheon international airport on a chartered flight,” the official said on Saturday, adding that all of the individuals have been taken into custody as criminal suspects.
South Korea sent a team to Cambodia earlier this week to investigate dozens of its nationals who were kidnapped into the Southeast Asian nation’s online scam industry.
South Korean National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac previously said the detained individuals included both “voluntary and involuntary participants” in scam operations.
On Friday, Cambodian Ministry of Interior spokesman Touch Sokhak said the repatriation agreement with South Korea was the “result of good cooperation in suppression of scams between the two countries”.
Online scam operations have proliferated in Cambodia since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the global shutdown saw many Chinese-owned casinos and hotels in the country pivot to illicit operations.
Operating from industrial-scale scam centres, tens of thousands of workers perpetrate online romance scams known as “pig-butchering”, often targeting people in the West in a vastly lucrative industry responsible for the theft of tens of billions of dollars each year.
Pig-butchering – a euphemism for fattening up a victim before they are slaughtered – often involves fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes that build trust over time before funds are stolen.
Parallel industries have blossomed in Laos, the Philippines and war-ravaged Myanmar, where accounts of imprisonment and abuse in scam centres are the most severe.
An estimated 200,000 people are working in dozens of large-scale scam operations across Cambodia, with many scam compounds owned by or linked to the country’s wealthy and politically connected. About 1,000 South Korean nationals are believed to be among that figure.
On Tuesday, the United States and United Kingdom announced sweeping sanctions against a Cambodia-based multinational crime network, identified as the Prince Group, for running a chain of “scam centres” across the region.
UK authorities seized 19 London properties worth more than 100 million pounds ($134m) linked to the Prince Group, which markets itself as a legitimate real estate, financial services and consumer businesses firm.
Prosecutors said that at one point, Prince Group’s chair, Chinese-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi, bragged that scam operations were pulling in $30m a day.
Chen – who has served as an adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, long-ruling former Prime Minister Hun Sen – is also wanted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering, according to the UK and US.
Still at large, he faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.
The move by the UK and US against the Prince Group came as South Korea announced a ban on travel to parts of Cambodia on Wednesday amid growing concerns over its citizens entering the scam industry.
South Korean police have said they will also conduct a joint investigation into the recent death of a college student in Cambodia who was reportedly kidnapped and tortured by a crime ring.
The South Korean student was found dead in a pick-up truck on August 8 in Cambodia’s southern Kampot province, with an autopsy revealing he “died as a result of severe torture, with multiple bruises and injuries across his body”.
South Korea will dispatch a task force to Cambodia on Wednesday to oversee the repatriation of citizens being held in the country after a surge of kidnappings, the office of President Lee Jae Myung said Tuesday. Lee discussed the issue during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Seoul. Pool Photo by Yonhap/EPA
SEOUL, Oct. 14 (UPI) — The South Korean government will send a joint response team to Cambodia to oversee the repatriation of citizens being held in the country after a surge in kidnappings, Seoul’s presidential office said Tuesday, following the highly publicized torture and murder of a 22-year-old who was lured by a scam job order.
The team, led by Second Vice Foreign Minister Kim Ji-na, will depart Wednesday, presidential spokesman Kim Nam-joon told reporters. Members of the National Police Agency and the National Intelligence Service will participate in the mission.
“The Ministry will make every possible diplomatic effort to encourage Cambodian cooperation and, in consultation with relevant ministries and agencies, strengthen the embassy’s response capabilities, including increasing the number of police officers stationed at the Cambodian embassy,” Kim said.
“The government will also consider upgrading travel alerts for key crime areas in Cambodia to prevent further damage,” he added.
The move comes after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday called for government ministries to use “all available resources” to help South Koreans trapped in Cambodia return home.
“Relevant ministries should consult with the Cambodian government and expedite the establishment of a regular cooperation system between law enforcement authorities,” Lee said at a Cabinet meeting, according to his office.
According to data from lawmaker Na Kyung-won, the number of kidnappings of South Koreans in Cambodia soared to 220 in 2024 and reached 330 through August of this year. In previous years, the average was between 10 and 20.
Most of the cases are linked to transnational crime gangs running large-scale voice phishing rings and illegal gambling operations. Victims are lured with fake job offers and then held against their will and forced to participate in criminal activities.
In one recent case that sparked public outrage, a Korean university student was found dead near Bokor Mountain in Kampot Province after being detained and tortured. Three Chinese nationals were indicted on murder and fraud charges by Cambodian prosecutors, state-run news agency Agence Khmer Press reported on Friday.
The rash of crime reports prompted Seoul’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun to summon Cambodia’s ambassador on Friday. The Foreign Ministry also raised its travel alert for the capital city of Phnom Penh and certain regions connected to the employment scams and detentions.
Seoul’s National Police Agency said Sunday that it planned to launch a “Korean Desk” in Cambodia to handle cases involving Korean nationals.
Lawmakers with South Korea’s opposition People Power Party on Tuesday criticized the government’s response to the rising number of crimes in Cambodia.
“Crimes targeting Koreans in Cambodia are not a new phenomenon, but the government has been inactive for some time and is only now taking action,” Rep. Choi Bo-yoon said in a statement. “Protecting the lives and safety of our citizens is the most important responsibility of any nation, but the Lee Jae Myung administration is increasingly putting the entire nation at risk.”
Choi called for a “full-scale, national effort” that includes beefing up local investigative cooperation and filling diplomatic positions, including the vacant ambassador post in Cambodia.
The ruling Democratic Party, meanwhile, blamed the previous administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol for failing to address the surge in crimes, which began while he was in office.
The DP’s Policy Committee Chairperson Han Jeoung-ae said that Yoon increased overseas development assistance to Cambodia while neglecting the safety of Korean citizens in the country.
“It has been revealed that the government reduced its international crime response personnel and ignored requests for more police officers,” Han said at a party meeting Tuesday. “Meanwhile, the number of reported detentions in Cambodia increased tenfold from 21 in 2023 to 221 in 2024.”
Sept. 25 (UPI) — The United States on Thursday sanctioned one person and five entities for their role in generating money for North Korea and its weapons programs.
“This action aims to disrupt illicit networks that facilitate these attacks and simultaneously cutting off funding for the DPRK unlawful weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs,” the State Department said in a statement.
DPRK are the initials of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The department accused those blacklisted Thursday of generating revenue for Pyongyang by conducting arms deals with Myanmar’s military regime, which has been fighting a brutal civil war — resulting in civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian infrastructure — since its coup of February 2021.
Myanmar-based Royal Shune Lei Co. Limited and key personnel, including Kyaw Thu Myo Myint and Tin Myo Aung, who assisted in arms deals for the Myanmar Air Force with Kim Jong Ju, a Beijing-based deputy representative of the Korean Mining Development Trading Co., were sanctioned Thursday.
“Also known as the 221 General Bureau, KOMID serves as the DPRK’s primary arms dealer and exporter of ballistic missile-related equipment,” the State Department said.
The designations also sanction Aung Ko Ko Oo, director of Royal Shune Lei. The State Department also named Nam Chol Ung, a North Korean national who laundered foreign earnings through a network of businesses in Southeast Asia. Nam is a representative of the Pyongyang’s Reconnaissance General Bureau.
“These actions underscore the United States’ commitment to disrupting the networks that support DPRK’s destabilizing activities and to promoting accountability for those who enable Burma’s military regime,” the State Department release said.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president said Thursday that Korean companies probably will hesitate to make further investments in the United States unless Washington improves its visa system for their employees, as U.S. authorities released hundreds of workers who were detained at a Georgia factory site last week.
In a news conference marking 100 days in office, Lee Jae Myung called for improvements in the U.S. visa system as he spoke about the Sept. 4 immigration raid that resulted in the arrest of more than 300 South Korean workers at a battery factory under construction at Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant west of Savannah.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry later confirmed that U.S. authorities had released the 330 detainees — 316 of them South Koreans — and that they were being transported by buses to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, where they will board a charter flight scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Friday afternoon. The group also includes 10 Chinese nationals, three Japanese nationals and one Indonesian.
The massive roundup and U.S. authorities’ release of video showing some workers being chained and taken away sparked widespread anger and a sense of betrayal in South Korea. The raid came less than two weeks after a summit between President Trump and Lee, and just weeks after the countries reached a July agreement that spared South Korea from the Trump administration’s highest tariffs — but only after Seoul pledged $350 billion in new U.S. investments, against the backdrop of a decaying job market at home.
Lawmakers from both Lee’s Liberal Democratic Party and the conservative opposition decried the detentions as outrageous and heavy-handed, while South Korea’s biggest newspaper compared the raid to a “rabbit hunt” executed by U.S. immigration authorities in a zeal to meet an alleged White House goal of 3,000 arrests a day.
During the news conference, Lee said South Korean and U.S. officials are discussing a possible improvement to the U.S. visa system, adding that under the current system South Korean companies “can’t help hesitating a lot” about making direct investments in the U.S.
Lee: ‘It’s not like these are long-term workers’
U.S. authorities said some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others entered legally but had expired visas or entered on visa waivers that prohibited them from working.
But South Korean officials expressed frustration that Washington has yet to act on Seoul’s years-long demand to ensure a visa system to accommodate skilled Korean workers, though it has been pressing South Korea to expand U.S. industrial investments.
South Korean companies have been mostly relying on short-term visitor visas or Electronic System for Travel Authorization to send workers who are needed to launch manufacturing sites and handle other setup tasks, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years.
Lee said that whether Washington establishes a visa system allowing South Korean companies to send skilled workers to industrial sites will have a “major impact” on future South Korean investments in America.
“It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” he said.
“If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it,” Lee added.
Lee said the raid showed a “cultural difference” between the two countries in how they handle immigration issues.
“In South Korea, we see Americans coming on tourist visas to teach English at private cram schools — they do it all the time, and we don’t think much of it, it’s just something you accept,” Lee said.
“But the United States clearly doesn’t see things that way. On top of that, U.S. immigration authorities pledge to strictly forbid illegal immigration and employment and carry out deportations in various aggressive ways, and our people happened to be caught in one of those cases,” he added.
South Korea, U.S. agree on working group to settle visa issues
After a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that U.S. officials have agreed to allow the workers detained in Georgia to later return to finish their work at the site. He added that the countries agreed to set up a joint working group for discussions on creating a new visa category to make it easier for South Korean companies to send their staff to work in the United States.
Before leaving for the U.S. on Monday, Cho said more South Korean workers in the U.S. could be vulnerable to future crackdowns if the visa issue isn’t resolved, but said Seoul does not yet have an estimate of how many might be at risk.
The State Department announced Thursday that Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau would visit Seoul this weekend as part of a three-nation Asia-Pacific trip that will also include Papua New Guinea and the Marshall Islands.
The Georgia battery plant is one of more than 20 major industrial sites that South Korean companies are building in the United States. They include other battery factories in Georgia and several other states, a semiconductor plant in Texas and a shipbuilding project in Philadelphia, a sector that Trump has frequently highlighted in relation to South Korea.
Min Jeonghun, a professor at South Korea’s National Diplomatic Academy, said it’s chiefly up to the United States to resolve the issue, either through legislation or by taking administrative steps to expand short-term work visas for training purposes.
Without an update in U.S. visa policies, Min said, “Korean companies will no longer be able to send their workers to the United States, causing inevitable delays in the expansion of facilities and other production activities, and the harm will boomerang back to the U.S. economy.”
Hyung-jin and Tong-Hyung write for the Associated Press. Tong-Hyung reported from Seoul.
LONDON — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday she doesn’t think the detention of hundreds of South Koreans in an immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia will deter investment in the United States because such tough actions mean there is no uncertainty about the Trump administration’s policies.
The detention of 475 workers, more than 300 of them South Korean, in the Sept. 4 raid has caused confusion, shock and a sense of betrayal among many in the U.S.-allied nation.
“This is a great opportunity for us to make sure that all companies are reassured that when you come to the United States, you’ll know what the rules of the game are,” Noem said at a meeting in London of ministers from the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partnership focused on border security.
“We’re encouraging all companies who want to come to the United States and help our economy and employ people, that we encourage them to employ U.S. citizens and to bring people to our country that want to follow our laws and work here the right way,” she told reporters.
The detained Koreans would be deported after most were detained for ignoring removal orders, while “a few” had engaged in other criminal activity and will “face the consequences,” Noem said.
Newly appointed U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood welcomed Noem and ministers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to the 18th-century headquarters of the Honourable Artillery Company for talks on countering unauthorized migration, child sexual abuse and the spread of opioids.
Mahmood, who was given the interior minister job in a shakeup of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Cabinet on Friday, said the ministers would “agree new measures to protect our borders with our Five Eyes partners, hitting people-smugglers hard.”
The far-flung countries are close allies with some common problems but also widely differ in their approaches to migration. The Trump administration’s program of street raids, mass detentions and large-scale deportations of unauthorized migrants has drawn domestic and international criticism and a host of legal challenges.
Noem says tough measures are an inspiration to others
Noem said there had not been disagreements among the ministers in talks focused on sharing information on criminal gangs, using technology to disrupt their networks and speeding extradition arrangements.
“I don’t think that the discussion today has covered politics at all,” she said. “It is what resources do we have that we can share so we can each protect our countries better?”
Noem said that “when we put tough measures in place, the more that we can talk about that and share that is an inspiration to other countries to do the same.”
She denied a plan to expand immigration raids and deploy the National Guard in Chicago, which has met with opposition from local and state authorities, was on hold.
“Nothing’s on hold. Everything is full speed ahead,” Noem told reporters, saying “we can run as many operations every single day as we need to, to keep America safe.”
Also attending Monday’s talks were Canadian Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Judith Collins, the attorney general and defense minister of New Zealand.
U.K. grapples with migrant crossings
Britain’s center-left Labor government is struggling to bring down the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, some 30,000 so far this year. It faces calls from opposition parties to leave the European Convention on Human Rights in order to take tougher action.
The government says it won’t do that, but may tweak the interpretation of the rights convention in British law. It has struck a deal with France to return some migrants who cross the channel and is working on similar agreements with other countries.
Mahmood said Monday that the U.K. could suspend issuing visas to people from countries that do not agree to take back their citizens with no right to remain in Britain, though she did not name any potential countries.
“We do expect countries to play ball, play by the rules, and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you do need to take them back,” she said.
Seoul/Mokpo, South Korea – In 2018 when Kim Ji-ung lived in the South Korean capital, Seoul, he felt alone all the time. Single and in his early 30s, the salesman spent most of his day at work or holed up in his apartment.
“I pondered about dying during my morning commute,” Kim told Al Jazeera.
“The most difficult thing was that I had no one to talk to. After work, I would be at home scrolling through TV channels or playing video games,” he said.
Finding it difficult to make connections at work, Kim was feeling increasingly desperate and isolated. Then a close friend of his collapsed at their workplace and died.
“That’s when I really started to ask myself, ‘Will I be next?’” he said.
It was then that Kim made one of the toughest decisions of his life – to pack his bags and move away from Seoul, a city of 9.6 million people that offered him the best chance of a career and a stable salary.
The capital’s population, which peaked at 10.97 million in 1992, has been decreasing steadily in recent decades, sparking alarm among officials. The city’s population of those aged 19 to 39 has been on the decline as well, falling from 3.18 million in 2016 to 2.86 million in 2023.
While Seoul continues to draw people with its promise of high-paying corporate jobs, census figures show the city is failing to retain its young population with nearly as many leaving it as moving to it over the past decade.
‘Hell Joseon’
This trend comes despite South Korea’s capital becoming a technological and cultural powerhouse that is consistently ranked among the world’s most exciting cities by international travellers.
Fortune 500 companies such as LG, Hyundai Motors and SK Group employ thousands of young professionals in their headquarters in the bustling downtown. The ultra-fashionable Gangnam district hosts one of the premier art fairs in the world, Frieze Seoul, and the country’s cosmetics and beauty industry, pop culture and cuisine are popular worldwide.
Seoul’s international allure is also evident in the hip bars, eateries and clubs in the Hongdae and Seongsu neighbourhoods, where foreign tourists flood the streets seven days a week.
But Seoul’s young adults – disillusioned by a housing bubble that has made homes unaffordable and a competitive work culture marked by long hours and low pay – have branded the capital’s work-to-survive lifestyle “Hell Joseon”. The term references the ancient kingdom that was once based where Seoul is today.
“Our society is known for its infamous jobs that force employees to work long hours, cut off the careers of women who give birth and make it hard for men to apply for paternity leave,” said Yoo Hye-jeong of the think tank Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future.
“Seoul’s abnormally high costs for housing and child education translate to difficulty in creating a stable economic foundation for families,” Yoo said, describing an incompatibility between work and having a family life in the capital.
Located in Mokpo, ‘Don’t Worry Village got its start from a deserter of Seoul [David D Lee/Al Jazeera]
‘Don’t Worry Village’
For Kim, his chance to move away from Seoul came by coincidence when he spotted an online ad for a getaway programme at Don’t Worry Village.
Located in Mokpo, a city tucked away in the southwestern corner of the country with a population of 210,000 and an abundance of abandoned buildings, the village got its start from another deserter from Seoul, Hong Dong-joo.
After receiving his high school education in Seoul’s upmarket Daechi-dong neighbourhood, Hong was destined to enter a top university in the capital and work for a major corporation – a direct route to the upper echelons of South Korean society.
But when he turned 20, he knew that “life in Seoul, working at a high-paying job was not the life I wanted,” the 38-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I didn’t want to spend long hours at the office every day.” And so, when Hong became a mechanical engineering major at a Seoul university, he did the improbable: He moved away from the city.
He came up with the plan to create Don’t Worry Village after setting up a travel agency and meeting hundreds of young adults who shared stories of isolation and struggling with corporate and social life in Seoul and elsewhere.
“The blueprint for our village was to make a hometown that would act as a community – something that so many people in our country lack in their lives,” he said.
“In some ways, I was in the business of providing protection for people in our society who needed it.”
Hong Dong-joo says he set up Don’t Worry Village to give young people a sense of community[David D Lee/Al Jazeera]
‘National emergency’
Analysts describe the situation for many young people in the country as a “national emergency” that is being largely overlooked.
“In the process of becoming a developed nation really fast, our society forgot to establish a support net for our young population,” said Kim Seong-a, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA),
“The side effects of a society going through extreme industrialisation in a very short amount of time was the gradual disappearing roles of families” in the modern lifestyle and work becoming its primary focus, she said.
Findings from a 2021 Pew Research Center survey support her assessment. Participants from 17 advanced economies were asked: “What makes life meaningful?” The most common answer for people from 14 of the 17 nations – which included Japan, the United States and New Zealand – was family. South Korean respondents, however, chose material wellbeing as their top answer. For them, family came in third place.
Kim, the KIHASA researcher, said South Korean society now prioritises “money over people”.
“We’ve seen significant improvements in the country’s GDP, life expectancy and other areas that can be improved through policy changes,” she said. “But social factors like faith in others, trust in society and generosity towards others have relatively been less developed in our country.”
In surveys of satisfaction with life, South Korea ranked 33 among 38 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), scoring 6.4 on a 10-point scale in 2023. It also has the highest number of suicides among OECD countries with a suicide rate of 24.3 per 100,000 people. Compare that with Lithuania, which came in at a distant second place with 18.5 per 100,000 people.
In the ensuing years, the South Korean suicide rate has only increased, reaching 28.3 per 100,000 people in 2024, a 13-year high.
Young people account for a significant number of the suicides. Of the 14,439 cases of suicide reported last year, 13.4 percent of the cases were people in their 30s.
“In our country, there are many young people who bear all the social risks that they accumulate from failing to get a job, struggling in school and going through family troubles,” Kim Seong-a said.
“They’re by themselves, so there’s a great chance that they can become isolated. They need someone around to talk to or ask for help when they’re going through a setback. This way, they can deal with it or overcome it,” she said.
Official figures, however, show the number of young people living alone in Seoul is on the rise. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, more than a third of the city’s population lives alone with young people accounting for 64 percent of single-person households, up from 51.3 percent a decade ago.
A recent survey of 3,000 single-person households in the city by The Seoul Institute, a leading think tank, found that 62.1 percent of respondents experienced persistent loneliness. Another 13.6 percent were identified as socially isolated, a term that refers to individuals with no support network during times of emotional distress, physical illness or sudden financial problems.
‘Seoul Without Loneliness’
South Korea’s government is well aware of the issues of social isolation and a punishing work culture in Seoul and has moved to address the issue in recent years.
Last year, it launched its “Seoul Without Loneliness” plan, which is investing 451.3 billion won ($322m) over five years in initiatives such as a 24-hour emotional support hotline and community centres called Seoul Maeum Convenience Stores, where people can seek counselling and drop in for free bowls of ramen noodles.
Authorities in Seoul have also promoted special date nights for singles in the city, and the government has introduced numerous stimulus packages for newlyweds and new parents to address South Korea’s declining birthrate, which is currently ranked the lowest in the world.
The government is also looking for solutions outside Seoul’s gates.
In fact, Don’t Worry Village was one of the first prototypes for inclusive communities outside Seoul that could potentially develop into youth-centred regions that create homes and jobs for young adults while populating rural regions.
With sponsorship from the Ministry of Interior and Safety, applicants to Don’t Worry Village receive financial assistance to relocate to Mokpo and attend workshops organised by Hong on useful skills required in the local community and networking with fellow residents.
Kim Ji-ung, the former salesman from Seoul, attended one such workshop in 2018 and then eventually moved there. After he did so, he said he was surprised by how easy it was to form social connections.
“Because the city is quite small, it’s likely that you’ll meet other young people through one way or another,” Kim said. “People ask favours to each other, and you make friends here by just saying ‘hi’ to them.”
That was such a stark contrast to Seoul, where people do not have time to greet each other and do not want to become involved in other people’s businesses, he said.
Kim worked various jobs in Mokpo until 2022 when he put his university degree to use and started a one-person interior design company. Hong is his neighbour, and the pair frequently grab lunch together. In addition to doing what he loves, Kim said the biggest change he has experienced is starting to enjoy leisure time.
“On random nights, I’ll just go down to the ferry terminal and get on a midnight boat to Jeju Island,” he said. “I’ll just stay there for the morning, but it’s the small things like this that tell me that I’m having a good time here.”
Looking outside Seoul
Hong’s life, too, has changed dramatically.
Back in his days in Seoul, he did not think too much about getting married. But he soon met the woman who became his wife in Mokpo and is now a father as well.
“In Seoul, the individual has to sacrifice so much of their own lives for their companies, to make a living and for the good of society as a whole,” Hong said. “But in Mokpo, I have control over my time. I’m able to do what I want for work, and money is not that intimidating to me any more.”
Two other residents in Don’t Worry Village, husband and wife Park Myung-ho and Kim Min-jee, also gave up lucrative careers in Seoul for what they described as a more “relaxed life” in Mokpo.
Park, 38, worked for one of South Korea’s biggest arms manufacturers while Kim was an employee at the country’s largest advertising company.
The couple married after meeting in Don’t Worry Village.
“There’s just too much competition in Seoul. It seemed like only people who possessed a lot of capital succeeded in starting a business,” Park said. “As someone who wanted to start my own business, it was more reasonable to look outside of Seoul.”
Park is now the CEO of a local property development company while Kim runs a guesthouse in downtown Mokpo that was developed by her husband’s company.
Kim, 35, also gave birth to a son more than a year ago whom she did not expect to have so soon.
“I always pictured having a child late in my years or being married without kids,” she said.
“Working for a major company meant nearly no time at home and weekends spent in the office. It’s almost impossible to raise kids in Seoul without the help of parents or childcare services, and finding an affordable housing arrangement is even harder,” she said.
Park Myung-ho, now a father, gave up a lucrative career in Seoul for a more relaxed life in Mokpo [David D Lee/Al Jazeera]
‘You’re judged for literally everything’
While Don’t Worry Village has become a prototype for more than 50 youth-centred communities around the country that the government has created in recent years, the reality for young adults moving away from Seoul to live in rural regions has proven to be difficult.
Workplaces, jobs and key infrastructure are still concentrated in Seoul.
And that is why, despite Hong hosting more than 21 workshops for people considering moving to Don’t Worry Village and attracting more than 2,000 visitors, only 20 people have remained there.
The Ministry of Interior and Safety, which helped start the youth villages, said about 10,000 people have participated in workshops at youth-centred communities across the country, but only about 900 ended up moving to them.
For many South Korean youth, starting a second chapter in life outside the country has become increasingly popular.
Brianna Lee is one of the tens of thousands of young adults who apply every year for working holiday visas to live and work abroad for a set time.
“Life in South Korea is just too intensive,” 30-year-old Lee said.
“You’re expected to get a job, get married, buy a house and have an amount of money at a certain age. And you’re judged for literally everything,” she said.
Working as a nurse in Ilsan, a city just north of Seoul, Lee said there is widespread discrimination inside hospitals, where people are critical towards nurses and view them as socially inferior.
“On top of working 11-hour shifts, we would be asked to do tasks that we weren’t required to perform,” she said.
After facing burnout, Lee applied for a working holiday in Canada, where she worked at restaurants and attended classes at an English-language academy for about a year.
Today, she is back home preparing to take a test to become a nurse in the US.
“They pay much better, and people give a lot of respect towards nurses in the US,” Lee said.
“Most importantly, people aren’t nosy,” she said.
“I think people care less about what you do for work and how you choose to live your life there.”
Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska.
Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the “bravery” and “heroism” of North Korean soldiers in retaking Russia’s Kursk region from Ukrainian forces during a call with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korean state media has reported.
Putin told Kim that he “highly appreciated” North Korea’s support and the “self-sacrificing spirit” displayed by its troops during the liberation of the western region, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.
Kim expressed his “heartfelt thanks” to Putin and said Pyongyang would “always remain faithful” to the spirit of the mutual defence treaty signed by the sides last year, as well as “fully support all measures to be taken by the Russian leadership in the future”, the KCNA said.
“The heads of states of the two countries exchanged views on the issues of mutual concern,” the KCNA said.
“Kim Jong Un and Putin agreed to make closer contact in the future.”
The call, days before Putin is set to meet United States President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine, is the latest sign of strengthening ties between North Korea and Russia amid Moscow’s ostracisation on the world stage.
“There are a lot of ifs still in the air, but the call suggests there’s a role for Russia, similar to the role South Korea played in 2018, in helping create an opening for US-DPRK relations,” Jenny Town, the director of the Korea programme at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“It might not be a focal point of the upcoming meeting, but it is likely to be part of the conversation.”
Last month, Kim told Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that Pyongyang would “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine, according to North Korean state media reports.
North Korea has deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s war and has drawn up plans to dispatch thousands more, according to assessments by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
In April, Putin announced that Moscow had fully recaptured Kursk, though Ukrainian officials disputed his claim that the entire region had been brought under Russian control.
At his scheduled summit with Putin on Friday, Trump is expected to press the Russian leader to agree to a peace deal.
On Monday, he told reporters that he will probably know within the “first two minutes” of meeting Putin whether they can reach a deal and that any agreement would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Moscow and Kyiv.
The BBC understands more than 50,000 North Koreans will eventually be sent to work in Russia
Thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work in slave-like conditions in Russia to fill a huge labour shortage exacerbated by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the BBC has learned.
Moscow has repeatedly turned to Pyongyang to help it fight the war, using its missiles, artillery shells and its soldiers.
Now, with many of Russia’s men either killed or tied up fighting – or having fled the country – South Korean intelligence officials have told the BBC that Moscow is increasingly relying on North Korean labourers.
We interviewed six North Korean workers who have fled Russia since the start of the war, along with government officials, researchers and those helping to rescue the labourers.
They detailed how the men are subjected to “abysmal” working conditions, and how the North Korean authorities are tightening their control over the workers to stop them escaping.
One of the workers, Jin, told the BBC that when he landed in Russia’s Far East, he was chaperoned from the airport to a construction site by a North Korean security agent, who ordered him not to talk to anyone or look at anything.
“The outside world is our enemy,” the agent told him. He was put straight to work building high-rise apartment blocks for 18 hours a day, he said.
All six workers we spoke to described the same punishing workdays – waking at 6am and being forced to build high-rise apartments until 2am the next morning, with just two days off a year.
We have changed their names to protect them.
Getty Images
Kim Jong Un has sent Vladimir Putin weapons and soldiers to fight his war in Ukraine
“Waking up was terrifying, realising you had to repeat the same day over again,” said another construction worker, Tae, who managed to escape Russia last year. Tae recalled how his hands would seize up in the morning, unable to open, paralysed from the previous day’s work.
“Some people would leave their post to sleep in the day, or fall asleep standing up, but the supervisors would find them and beat them. It was truly like we were dying,” said another of the workers, Chan.
“The conditions are truly abysmal,” said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University who has travelled to Russia multiple times to interview North Korean labourers.
“The workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. At night the lights are turned out and they work in the dark, with little safety equipment.”
The escapees told us that the workers are confined to their construction sites day and night, where they are watched by agents from North Korea’s state security department. They sleep in dirty, overcrowded shipping containers, infested with bugs, or on the floor of unfinished apartment blocks, with tarps pulled over the door frames to try to keep out the cold.
One labourer, Nam, said he once fell four metres off his building site and “smashed up” his face, leaving him unable to work. Even then his supervisors would not let him leave the site to visit a hospital.
In the past, tens of thousands of North Koreans worked in Russia earning millions of pounds a year for the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, and his cash-strapped regime. Then in 2019, the UN banned countries from using these workers in an attempt to cut off Kim’s funds and stop him building nuclear weapons, meaning most were sent home.
But last year more than 10,000 labourers were sent to Russia, according to a South Korean intelligence official speaking to the BBC on the condition of anonymity. They told us that even more were expected to arrive this year, with Pyongyang possibly dispatching more than 50,000 workers in total.
The sudden influx means North Korean workers are now “everywhere in Russia,” the official added. While most are working on large-scale construction projects, others have been assigned to clothing factories and IT centres, they said, in violation of the UN sanctions banning the use of North Korean labour.
Russian government figures show that more than 13,000 North Koreans entered the country in 2024, a 12-fold increase from the previous year. Nearly 8,000 of them entered on student visas but, according to the intelligence official and experts, this is a tactic used by Russia to bypass the UN ban.
In June, a senior Russian official, Sergei Shoigu, admitted for the first time that 5,000 North Koreans would be sent to rebuild Kursk, a Russian region seized by Ukrainian forces last year but who have since been pushed back.
The South Korean official told us it was also “highly likely” some North Koreans would soon be deployed to work on reconstruction projects in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.
“Russia is suffering a severe labour shortage right now and North Koreans offer the perfect solution. They are cheap, hard-working and don’t get into trouble,” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a renowned expert in North Korea-Russia relations.
KCNA
These flowers were sent to Kim Jong Un by various Russian construction companies in April, according to North Korean state media
These overseas construction jobs are highly coveted in North Korea as they promise to pay better than the work at home. Most workers go hoping to escape poverty and be able to buy a house for their family or start a business when they return. Only the most trusted men are selected after being rigorously vetted, and they must leave their families behind.
But the bulk of their earnings is sent straight to the North Korean state as “loyalty fees”. The remaining fraction – usually between $100-200 (£74-£149) a month – is marked down on a ledger. The workers only receive this money when they return home – a recent tactic, experts say, to stop them running away.
Once the men realise the reality of the harsh work and lack of pay, it can be shattering. Tae said he was “ashamed” when he learnt that other construction workers from central Asia were being paid five times more than him for a third of the work. “I felt like I was in a labour camp; a prison without bars,” he said.
The labourer Jin still bristles when he remembers how the other workers would call them slaves. “You are not men, just machines that can speak,” they jeered. At one point, Jin’s manager told him he might not receive any money when he returned to North Korea because the state needed it instead. It was then he decided to risk his life to escape.
Tae made the decision to defect after watching YouTube videos showing how much workers in South Korea were paid. One night, he packed his belongings into a bin liner, stuffed a blanket under his bed sheets to make it look as if he was still sleeping, and crept out of his construction site. He hailed a taxi and travelled thousands of kilometres across the country to meet a lawyer who helped arrange his journey on to Seoul.
In recent years, a small number of workers have been able to orchestrate their escapes using forbidden second-hand smartphones, bought by saving the small daily allowance they received for cigarettes and alcohol.
A handful of labourers have managed to escape Russia during the war and reach Seoul
In an attempt to prevent these escapes, multiple sources have told us that the North Korean authorities are now cracking down on workers’ already limited freedom.
According to Prof Kang from Dong-A University, one way the regime has tried to control the workers over the last year is by subjecting them to more frequent ideological training and self-criticism sessions, in which they are forced to declare their loyalty to Kim Jong Un and log their failings.
Rare opportunities to leave construction sites have also been cut. “The workers used to go out in groups once a month, but recently these trips have reduced to almost zero,” Prof Kang added.
Kim Seung-chul, a Seoul-based activist who helps rescue North Korean workers from Russia, said these outings were being more tightly controlled. “They used to be allowed to leave in pairs, but since 2023 they have had to travel in groups of five and are monitored more intensely.”
In this climate, fewer workers are managing to escape. The South Korean government told us the number of North Koreans making it out of Russia each year and arriving in Seoul had halved since 2022 – from around 20 a year to just 10.
Mr Lankov, the expert in North Korea-Russia relations, said the crackdowns were likely in preparation for many more workers arriving.
“These workers will be the lasting legacy of Kim and Putin’s wartime friendship,” he said, arguing the workers would continue arriving long after the war had ended, and the deployment of soldiers and weapons had ceased.
SEOUL — When South Koreans start to obsess over a movie or TV series, they abbreviate its name, a distinction given to Netflix’s latest hit “K-pop Demon Hunters.” In media headlines and in every corner of the internet, the American-made film is now universally referred to as “Keh-deh-hun” — the first three syllables of the title when read aloud in Korean.
And audiences are already clamoring for a sequel.
The animated film follows a fictional South Korean girl group named “HUNTR/X” as its three members — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — try to deliver the world from evil through the power of song and K-pop fandom.
Since its release in June, it has become the most watched original animated film in Netflix history, with millions of views worldwide, including the U.S. and South Korea, where its soundtrack has topped the charts on local music streaming platform Melon. Fans have also cleaned out the gift shop at the National Museum of Korea, which has run out of a traditional tiger pin that resembles one of the movie’s characters.
Much of the film’s popularity in South Korea is rooted in its keenly observed details and references to Korean folklore, pop culture and even national habits — the result of having a production team filled with K-pop fans, as well as a group research trip to South Korea that co-director Maggie Kang led in order to document details as minute as the appearance of local pavement.
There are nods to traditional Korean folk painting, a Korean guide to the afterlife, the progenitors of K-pop and everyday mannerisms. In one scene, at a table in a restaurant where the three girls are eating, viewers might notice how the utensils are laid atop a napkin, an essential ritual for dining out in South Korea — alongside pouring cups of water for everyone at the table.
“The more that I watch ‘Keh-deh-hun,’ the more that I notice the details,” South Korean music critic Kim Yoon-ha told local media last month. “It managed to achieve a verisimilitude that would leave any Korean in awe.”
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“K-pop Demon Hunters” has nods to traditional Korean folk painting, a Korean guide to the afterlife, the progenitors of K-pop and everydaymannerisms.
(Netflix)
Despite its subject matter and association with the “K-wave,” that catch-all term for any and all Korean cultural export, “K-pop Demon Hunters,” at least in the narrowest sense, doesn’t quite fit the bill.
Produced by Sony Pictures and directed by Korean Canadian Kang and Chris Appelhans — who has held creative roles on other animated films such as “Coraline” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” — the movie is primarily in English and geared toward non-Korean audiences. But its popularity in South Korea is another sign that the boundaries of the K-wave are increasingly fluid — and that, with more and more diaspora Korean artists entering the mix, it flows in the opposite direction, too.
Those barriers have already long since broken down in music: many K-pop artists and songwriters are non-Korean or part of the Korean diaspora, reflecting the genre’s history of foreign influences such as Japanese pop or American hip-hop.
“Once a cultural creation acquires a universality, you can’t just confine it to the borders of the country of origin, which is where K-pop is today,” said Kim Il-joong, director of the content business division at the Korea Creative Content Agency, a government body whose mission is to promote South Korean content worldwide. “Despite what the name ‘K-pop’ suggests, it is really a global product.”
In “K-pop Demon Hunters,” Zoey is a rapper from Burbank. In addition, the soundtrack was written and performed by a team that includes producers, artists and choreographers associated with some of the biggest real-life K-pop groups of the past decade.
Streaming productions are increasingly flying multiple flags, too: Apple TV’s “Pachinko” or Netflix’s “XO, Kitty” are both American productions that were filmed in South Korea. But few productions have been able to inspire quite the same level of enthusiasm as “K-pop Demon Hunters,” whose charm for many South Koreans is how accurately it captures local idiosyncrasies and contemporary life.
While flying in their private jet, the three girls are shown sitting on the floor even though there is a sofa right beside them. This tendency to use sofas as little more than backrests is an endless source of humor and self-fascination among South Koreans, most of whom would agree that the centuries-old custom of sitting on the floor dies hard.
South Korean fans and media have noted that the characters correctly pronounce “ramyeon,” or Korean instant noodles. The fact that ramyeon is often conflated with Japanese ramen — which inspired the invention of the former decades ago — has long been a point of exasperation for many South Koreans and local ramyeon companies, which point to the fact that the Korean adaption has since evolved into something distinct.
It’s a small difference — the Korean version is pronounced “rah myun” — but one that it pays to get right in South Korea.
Apple TV’s “Pachinko,” with Sungkyu Kim, Eunchae Jung and Minha Kim, is an American production filmed in South Korea.
(Apple)
The girls’ cravings for ramyeon during their flight also caught the eye of Ireh, a member of the real-life South Korean girl group Purple Kiss who praised the film’s portrayals of life as a K-pop artist.
“I don’t normally eat ramyeon but whenever I go on tour, I end up eating it,” she said in a recent interview with local media. “The scene reminded me of myself.”
South Korean fans have also been delighted by a pair of animals, Derpy and Sussy, which borrow from jakhodo, a genre of traditional Korean folk painting in which tigers and magpies are depicted side by side, popularized during the Joseon Dynasty in the 19th century.
In the film, Derpy is the fluorescent tiger with goggle eyes that always appears with its sidekick, a three-eyed bird named Sussy.
“K-pop Demon Hunters” is peppered with homages to Korean artists throughout history who are seen today as the progenitors of contemporary K-pop.
(Netflix)
Though they have long since been extinct, tigers were once a feared presence on the Korean peninsula, at times coming down from the mountains to terrorize the populace. They were also revered as talismans that warded off evil spirits. But much like Derpy itself, jakhodo reimagined tigers as friendlier, oftentimes comical beings. Historians have interpreted this as the era’s political satire: the magpie, audacious in the presence of a great predator, represented the common man standing up to the nobility.
The movie is peppered with homages to Korean artists throughout history who are seen today as the progenitors of contemporary K-pop. There are apparent nods to the “Jeogori Sisters,” a three-piece outfit that was active from 1939 to 1945 and is often described as Korea’s first girl group, followed by the Kim Sisters, another three-piece that found success in the U.S., performing in Las Vegas and appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Longtime K-pop fans might recognize the demon hunters from the 1990s as S.E.S., a pioneering girl group formed by S.M. Entertainment, the label behind present-day superstars Aespa and Red Velvet. (Bada, S.E.S.’s main vocalist, recently covered “Golden,” the film’s headline track, on YouTube.)
For a long time, South Korean audiences have often complained about outside depictions of the country as inauthentic and out of touch. Not anymore.
“Korea wasn’t just shown as an extra add-on as it has been for so long,” Kim said. “‘K-pop Demon Hunters’ did such a great job depicting Korea in a way that made it instantly recognizable to audiences here.”
South Korea repatriated six rescued North Koreans by sea Wednesday, sending them across the maritime border on their repaired wooden boat. Photo courtesy of South Korea Ministry of Unification
July 9 (UPI) — South Korea on Wednesday repatriated six North Koreans across the maritime border in the East Sea, months after they drifted into southern waters and were rescued.
A repaired wooden boat carrying the North Koreans crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the two Koreas, at 8:56 a.m., Seoul’s Unification Ministry said in a statement to reporters.
“A North Korean patrol boat was at the handover point at the time of repatriation, and the North Korean vessel returned on its own,” the ministry said in the statement.
“During the repatriation process, we repeatedly confirmed the North Korean residents’ free will to return, and cooperated with relevant organizations to safely protect the North Korean residents until repatriation,” the ministry said.
Ministry spokesman Koo Byoung-sam said earlier this week that Seoul’s intention was to “repatriate them quickly and safely from a humanitarian standpoint.”
In May, South Korea’s military and coast guard rescued four North Koreans who were drifting in a small boat in the East Sea around 60 miles south of the Northern Limit Line. A pair of North Korean nationals were also rescued under similar circumstances in the Yellow Sea in March.
In a background briefing with reporters on Wednesday, a ministry official confirmed that North Korea never responded to notification efforts about the repatriation plan. The South reached out repeatedly via the U.S.-led United Nations Command, whose duties include controlling DMZ access and communicating with the North Korean military.
Seoul informed Pyongyang of the repatriation time and location through the UNC channel, and the North Korean boats appeared without prior notice, the ministry official said.
North Korea has completely cut off communications with the South in recent years as tensions remain high on the Peninsula.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has made an effort to improve inter-Korean relations since taking office last month and has pledged to restore a military hotline that the North has not responded to since 2023. He recently ordered the suspension of propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts at the DMZ in an effort to lower tensions in the border area.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry also recently used a press briefing to request that the North give advance notice before releasing water from a dam across the border. Ministry spokeswoman Chang Yoon-jeong called the public appeal a form of “indirect communication” with Pyongyang.
South Korean authorities are currently investigating a North Korean man who crossed the heavily fortified land border between the two Koreas and was taken into custody by the South’s military. The man identified himself as a civilian, officials said, but they have not confirmed whether he intends to defect to the South.
North Koreans’ repatriation comes as South Korea’s newly-elected president is working to improve inter-Korean ties.
South Korea has repatriated six North Koreans who were rescued at sea earlier this year after their vessels drifted across the de facto maritime border, Seoul’s Unification Ministry has said.
The North Koreans, who were picked up by South Korean authorities in separate vessels in March and May, were transported across the Northern Limit Line on Wednesday morning with their “full consent” and after they had repeatedly expressed their wish to return home, the ministry said.
The repatriation was successfully completed with the cooperation of North Korean authorities despite repeated failed attempts by Seoul to contact Pyongyang about their return, according to the ministry.
The development comes as South Korea’s newly-elected president, Lee Jae-myung, is working to bolster ties between the two Koreas, which remain in a technical state of war after hostilities in the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Speaking at a news conference to mark his first month in office last week, Lee said that Seoul should work to improve relations in coordination with its ally, the United States, and that cutting off dialogue completely would be a “foolish act”.
Last month, South Korea’s military turned off loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korea propaganda across the inter-Korean border in one of the Lee administration’s first steps towards rapprochement.
South Korea’s Ministry of National Defence at the time said the move would help “to restore trust in inter-Korean relations” and “promote peace on the Korean Peninsula”.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Koreans swam, rode water park slides and enjoyed other water activities at a newly opened mammoth beach resort, state media reported Wednesday, as the country largely maintains a ban on the entry of foreign tourists.
The Wonsan-Kalma eastern coastal tourist zone, which North Korea says can accommodate nearly 20,000 people, is at the heart of leader Kim Jong Un’s push to boost tourism as a way to improve his country’s struggling economy. But prospects for the resort, the biggest tourist complex in North Korea, aren’t clear, as the country won’t likely fully reopen its borders and embrace Western tourists anytime soon, observers say.
The official Korean Central News Agency reported the Wonsan-Kalma area began service Tuesday, drawing a large number of North Koreans who enjoyed open water swimming, slides and other attractions at a water park and various water activities in the area.
“The guests’ hearts were filled with overwhelming emotion as they felt the astonishing new heights of our-style tourism culture blossoming under the era of the Workers’ Party,” KCNA said in a typical propaganda-driven dispatch.
Photos released by North Korean state media showed children with tubes and inflatable balls dipping into the sea, while others in colorful swimsuits beamed while sitting beneath red-and-white parasols.
Kim said at the inaugural ceremony last week the site would be recorded as “one of the greatest successes this year” and called its opening “the proud first step” toward realizing the government’s policy of developing tourism.
Since 2022, North Korea has been slowly easing the curbs imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and reopening its borders in phases. But the country hasn’t said whether and when it would fully resume international tourism.
Chinese group tours, which made up more than 90% of visitors before the pandemic, remain stalled while there are questions about ties between the two socialist neighbors. In February this year, North Korea allowed a small group of international tourists to visit its northeastern border city of Rason, only to stop that tour program in less than a month.
Since February 2024, North Korea has been accepting Russian tourists amid expanding military cooperation between the countries. But Russian government records seen by South Korean experts show a little more than 2,000 Russians, only about 880 of them tourists, visited North Korea last year, a number that is too small to revive North Korea’s tourism.
Russia’s Primorsky region, which borders North Korea, said last week that the first group of Russian tourists to the Wonsan-Kalma resort will depart on July 7 for a eight-day trip that includes a visit to Pyongyang.
Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.
After a raucous night out in my 20s, the real afterparty was always at BCD Tofu House — hunched over bubbling Korean tofu stew and a sizzling-hot stone bowl of steamed rice. After I’d scooped most of it out, a server would pour warm tea into the bowl, loosening the rice clinging stubbornly to the bottom. Scraping up those crispy-chewy bits of scorched rice, known in Korean as nurungji, quickly became my favorite part of the meal.
Long before electric rice cookers, Koreans traditionally cooked rice over an open flame in an iron cauldron called a gamasot. As it steamed, the bottom layer would crisp up against the hot metal, forming golden-brown nurungji.
“Today, nurungji simply means the crispy layer of rice that forms at the bottom of any pot or cooking appliance,” says Sarah Ahn, who co-wrote the Korean cookbook “Umma” with her mother, Nam Soon Ahn. “Personally, and within Korean culture, I see nurungji as a deeply nostalgic food, especially for Koreans of my mom’s generation.”
Chef and cookbook author Debbie Lee adds, “Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s from overcooking — what I call a great culinary accident.”
Korea isn’t alone in its love for scorched rice. Persian tahdig is the crust that forms at the bottom of the pot, flipped and served with the crispy layer on top. Chinese guoba is crispy rice paired with saucy stir-fries to soak up every bit of flavor. In West Africa, kanzo refers to the caramelized layer left behind after cooking, often found in dishes like jollof rice. Spain’s socarrat forms the base of well-executed paella.
And in Korea, nurungji is endlessly versatile — enjoyed on its own, steeped in hot water or tea as sungnyung (thought to be a soothing palate cleanser and digestive aid), or transformed into nurungji-tang, where the rice becomes the crunchy base for a light broth with seafood or vegetables.
With its nutty, toasted flavor that highlights the grain’s natural aroma, nurungji is comfort food born out of practicality. “Like so much of Korean food, it represents our resourcefulness — nothing goes to waste! — and our ability to find flavor in humble things,” says Sarah. Rather than discarding it, Koreans embraced the crunchy layer as a snack or meal.
“My parents are from Pyongyang and fled during the war,” says Lee. “My mother told me that they’d find an abandoned house to rest in, and nine times out of 10, there was rice. They lived off porridge, steamed rice, and ultimately nurungji as a snack.”
SeongHee Jeong, chef and co-owner of Koreatown’s Borit Gogae, remembers eating it sprinkled with sugar — a delicious treat when sweets were scarce. While there’s no single way to make it today, Sarah and her mom swear by the traditional method. “Nothing compares to the flavor of rice cooked in a gamasot over a wood fire,” Sarah says. “That taste is so iconic, you’ll even find packaged snacks trying to replicate it.”
In L.A., some restaurants keep it old-school by serving nurungji simply steeped in tea or hot water, while others are getting creative with it. Think: nurungji risotto at Jilli, an iced nurungji crema at Bodega Park or a fried chicken and nurungi dish at Fanny’s. At her Joseon pop-up last year, Lee even spun it into a nurungji crème brûlée.
“It’s truly amazing how humble ingredients born from hardship always find their way back,” says Sarah.
Here are 13 of the best restaurants in L.A. serving nurungji in both traditional and unexpected ways.
