​Quotes of the Day:

"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies." 

– Robert F. Kennedy

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." 

– Thomas Jefferson

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink." 

– George Orwell

1. The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry

2. Kim Yo Jong: North Korea leader denies removing propaganda loudspeakers at border

3. Hack of North Korean Spy’s Computer Exposes Almost Espionage Operations

4. Nodutdol: the Group Pushing Americans to Support North Korea

5. Best of: Is the World Ready for the Population Bust?f

6. US-led drills risk triggering ‘tidal wave’ threatening peace, North Korea says

7. JCS operations chief suspended over alleged anti-N.K. drones in martial law probe

8. US formalizes talks to modernize alliance with South Korea

9. North Korea denies loudspeaker removal but says Trump-Kim ‘meeting’ is possible

10. Editorial: S. Korea's Liberation Day only shows a divided nation

11. Ministry of Unification Plans to Reactivate Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea

12. Russian Duma chief, pro-Putin singer Shaman land in North Korea for festivities

13. Defense minister, U.S. lawmakers discuss alliance, security situation on Korean Peninsula

14.  Chinese ambassador welcomes Lee's criticism of anti-China rallies

1. The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry

​This is quite a story. It is the first comprehensive story I have read that sheds light on this terrible situation. It is not only about Sue Mi but also about the FARA regulation and how the government uses it. And it describes some common practices in the think tank community.

The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry

How a high-flying former CIA analyst was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-strange-espionage-case-of-sue-mi-terry.html

By Suki Kim, an investigative journalist and a novelist. 

flip.it · by Suki Kim ·

Photo: Yonhap News Agency

On September 12, 2024, about a hundred people gathered at a rooftop party in Tribeca where lines of servers held platters of palomas and tables were strewn with gleaming copies of a new book about Ronald Reagan. At the center was the author, Max Boot, a sharp-suited Russian American who was also celebrating his 55th birthday, in honor of which the hostess wheeled out a surprise: a cake shaped like the Gipper. In one corner, a guest whispered to another that they had wondered whether the party would be canceled. The other person nodded, adding that public opinion about “the incident” seemed to be shifting. They were referring to the recent arrest of the author’s wife, Sue Mi Terry, for allegedly being a spy. Now she was out on bail, standing next to Boot in a sleek white pantsuit.

Terry, a former CIA analyst and Korea expert, was indicted on July 16, 2024, by the Southern District of New York on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for South Korea’s government for more than a decade. The news was met with shock in the rarefied foreign-policy circles in which Terry moved. Since leaving the CIA in 2011 she has been a private citizen without a security clearance, working for prestigious think tanks, writing for the New York Times and Foreign Affairs, testifying before Congress, and appearing as a commentator on cable television. I’ve known Terry professionally for years, both of us members of a small group of North Korea watchers who sit on the same policy panels. As one of the few Korean-born women in the field, she stood out for her fluency in both the language and geopolitics of the peninsula. I found her disarmingly charming in a down-to-earth way that made it easy to forget she was former CIA.

With Boot by her side, she cut a glamorous figure in foreign-policy spheres stretching from New York to Washington, impeccably dressed and surrounded by cultural and political elites. Both Boot and Terry were immigrants who had risen against the odds to the highest echelons of the American meritocracy — both intellectuals, both experts on countries central to U.S. foreign policy. Boot is a best-selling author and columnist for the Washington Post, a conservative who opposes Vladimir Putin’s regime and has suggested Donald Trump could be a Russian asset. He even co-wrote op-eds with his wife — one of which the indictment now claims was part of a campaign directed by the South Korean government.

In June 2023, three FBI agents arrived unannounced at their Manhattan apartment while Boot was at the gym. According to Terry, they forbade her from changing out of her pajamas, and questioned her without informing her of her right to counsel, and one female agent watched her as she eventually changed clothes with their permission. They surveilled her husband’s movements and arranged with the New York Police Department to block him from entering the apartment. When he returned, she says, she was instructed to lie to him about the nature of the interrogation. The agents then brought her to a nearby hotel where the questioning continued for several hours. There, she says, they pushed her to admit she had been operating under the direction of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. They told her to “come clean,” said she “was close to saying” what they needed, and that she “was not sorry enough” and “needed to retire,” she wrote in a sworn affidavit. “They kept insisting that I needed to state that ‘I was under the “direction” or “control” of the NIS’ … I consistently said that was false.”

Apparently, the government has been surveilling Terry since 2013, two years after she left the CIA. Prosecutors claim she accepted luxury gifts — two handbags and a coat — from South Korean diplomats who were later identified as NIS agents. They say she published op-eds and articles using talking points provided by her South Korean contact and that, at that contact’s request, she allegedly organized a happy hour for U.S. congressional staffers, which he funded. She allegedly shared notes from an off-the-record State Department meeting with him and allegedly failed to disclose that he was the source of more than $37,000 in donations to the Wilson Center, the think tank where she served as the director.

Though a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act is not technically an espionage charge, the indictment’s language — especially its references to Terry’s “handlers” and the “direction” she received from them — suggests otherwise. Other people who have been charged with violating FARA include former senator Robert Menendez, who was convicted of accepting gold bars and other bribes to further the interests of the Egyptian government; Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government at the behest of the Ukrainians; and Linda Sun, a former aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul who has been accused of being a Chinese secret agent. Terry has now joined this illustrious company to the bewilderment of many of her friends, colleagues, and associates.

Her former husband, the venture capitalist Guy Vidra, said the charges were ludicrous, describing her as “rah-rah American. Loyal patriot. Hawkish.” Moon Chung-in, an adviser to former South Korean president Moon Jae-in, said he long saw Terry as an adversary rather than a secret ally — one of those “Washington hard-liners” opposed to warmer relations between South and North. Her defenders also note that it strains credulity that Terry, who lives a life of relative luxury, would sell out her adopted country and jeopardize her career and reputation for a couple of handbags and a donation to her think tank. They say the case essentially criminalizes the routine networking that occurs between think-tank officials and representatives of foreign governments.

Of course, if you were to construct a credible spy, you might make them a patriotic neocon who charms people with her approachable demeanor and is married to Max Boot. And Terry’s critics say that, if the indictment is to be believed, she crossed clear ethical and legal lines, even while her motives remain hazy. The case is so confounding, so resistant to neat explanation, that it has spawned several equally plausible narratives. Is Terry the victim of a government panic about the infiltration of foreign agents that stretches back to the Mueller investigation in 2017? Did she grow blithe about maintaining ethical standards the longer she remained ensconced in the high-flying world of international diplomacy? Is her case a warning for any immigrant serving as an expert of their country of origin? Or is she a model for a 21st-century secret agent?

Born in 1969 as Sue Mi Kim in Busan, South Korea, and raised in Seoul, she moved to the U.S. at age 12 after her mother married a U.S. Army officer. She took her stepfather’s surname and became a U.S. citizen in 1985. “I taught her ABC on the plane over,” said her mother, now a volunteer principal at a Korean-language school in McLean, Virginia. Owing to her lack of English, she was placed in the fifth grade instead of sixth. Yet not only did Terry master English and graduate from New York University with a degree in political science in 1993, she also eventually earned a Ph.D. in 2001 from the Fletcher School at Tufts University — the oldest graduate school of international affairs in the U.S. and a training ground for foreign diplomats.

At Fletcher, she met Vidra, who described her as strong-willed, independent, and very patriotic even then. He got a job in New York as an operator for a software company, but when Terry moved to Washington, he followed, working remotely from their home in Falls Church, Virginia; they married in 2003. Terry joined the CIA shortly before 9/11, which Vidra says intensified her sense of mission to protect the country from foreign threats. For an immigrant, entering that organization was a profound source of pride — for both her and her mother, who says that Terry is someone “who could die for America.”

This was the era of hypervigilant counterterrorism and controversial CIA tactics such as the torture programs. Terry quickly rose to become a senior analyst, earning the nickname “Tsunami” for her unstoppable drive. Jung Pak, a former colleague at the CIA, said, “When you’re writing the President’s Daily Brief, you’re working until 11 p.m. or midnight, and back in the office by 5 a.m. for pre-briefs. It didn’t happen every day but often enough that I still feel the muscle memory.” Another former colleague described the situation similarly: too many hours for not enough money. But Terry was obsessed with the integrity of the work, with getting it right, and she was excellent at it.

When I asked what it was like being married to someone in the CIA, Vidra first clarified, “She was an analyst, not a spy,” assessing America’s adversaries’ intentions, capabilities, and motivations. But he added that she shared little about her work: “At the end of the day, you ask how was your day, and all you get is, ‘It was good.’ Not much more. That was challenging.”

Between 2005 and 2007, Terry gave birth to their two sons. Her career was thriving, according to her colleagues and Vidra; she was getting coveted rotations (temporary assignments to other departments as part of a career-development plan) to serve the National Security Council and the White House under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Yet the work took a toll on her marriage, and by 2010 the couple had separated and Vidra wanted to move back to New York. They agreed that the family should stay in the same city for the sake of their children, so Terry worked out a rotation to be a visiting intelligence fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (which publishes Foreign Affairs). It was there that Terry met Boot, who was also a fellow. The two were assigned to take a group of CFR members overseas on a trip to South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, and by the end of the trip, they had fallen in love. In 2011 she left the CIA, and later she and Boot moved in together in New York.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act was introduced in 1938 to counter Nazi and Communist propaganda, the intention being to control foreign-sponsored information disseminated in the U.S. The statute remained largely dormant in subsequent decades — unearthed for a mere seven prosecutions between 1966 and 2017 — until the Mueller investigation, which used FARA to target Manafort and his associate Richard Gates for lobbying on behalf of the pro-Russian former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Since then, there have been at least 21 criminal FARA cases, including several members of Trump’s circle, while FARA-based investigations have targeted everything from environmental groups and pro-Palestinian activists to human-rights organizations and churches.

The expansion of FARA’s dragnet has drawn critics from across the ideological spectrum. In 2022, a group of nonprofits led by the ACLU warned that “FARA’s overbreadth and vagueness can undermine and chill First Amendment rights to speech and association and the statute has a history of being used to target undesirable expressive conduct.” In January, the national security publication Lawfare, part of the centrist Brookings Institute, said FARA “functions increasingly like a sword of Damocles hanging over broad sections of U.S. civil society, the business community, and the country’s political class, with no one being quite sure if — or when — it might drop on them.” And in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Justice would begin limiting the criminal enforcement of FARA to prevent “further weaponization and abuse of prosecutorial discretion.”

One FARA lawyer told me the government has a history of pursuing high-profile but weak cases, often driven by prosecutorial ambition. One such example is the case of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, who had been indicted on lobbying for Ukraine; he was eventually found not guilty. Brandon Van Grack, former chief of DoJ’s FARA unit, told me: “What you’re seeing is a pattern of elected officials who are being investigated. It’s not just about what did the person do — it’s about what access did this person have.” Such was the case, says Van Grack, with the casino mogul and Trump supporter Steve Wynn, who was accused by the DoJ in a FARA case of acting as an agent for China; the case was eventually dismissed. Would they have gone after Wynn without his high-level access? And Terry, as a former CIA analyst who also worked at the White House and is married to Max Boot, had access to numerous people in the U.S. government.

Many of Terry’s alleged actions — courting sources, sharing talking points, engaging with embassy officials — are routine in the think tank world. “The foreign-lobbying-registration system is a joke. Half of the foreign lobbyists in Washington don’t register because they can get away without doing it. Of the half that do many don’t provide the information they’re supposed to, or they provide deliberately misleading information so it’s still often hard to figure out who’s actually paying them or what they’re doing in exchange for the money, so it defeats the whole purpose of disclosure anyway,” said Ken Silverstein, a journalist who has covered FARA for decades. Several organizations — the ACLU, the Knight First Amendment Institute, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — have filed amicus briefs in her defense. “The allegations appear to criminalize the kind of meetings and outreach that are typical and routine with embassy officials of allied nations,” said Peter Bergen, an executive at New America.

Some critics have pointed to the sensational way in which Terry has been portrayed. Headlines emphasized the designer handbags she allegedly received and the “Michelin-starred” dinners her alleged handler treated her to. One outlet ran red-carpet images of Terry in a skimpy dress, portraying her as a luxury-loving spy. “It feels racialized,” said Mimi Alemayehou, a Fletcher classmate. “Would she face the same scrutiny if she were Sue Smith from Ohio?”

The indictment against Terry claims she “resigned in lieu of termination” from the CIA owing to “problems” in her interactions with South Korean officials. Her legal team and former colleagues dispute this. They say she left voluntarily after her separation from Vidra to raise her children in New York and that her career ended in good standing. No public evidence appears to support the government’s version. Still, one former counterintelligence officer told me the length and intensity of the surveillance, which may have begun as early as 2011, suggest this is more than just a FARA case. “It reads like a full-blown counterespionage investigation,” he said. But he acknowledged this remains conjecture — no classified leaks from her time at the CIA have been alleged.

Despite the fact that the scope of the law has grown in recent years, at its heart it remains about disclosure — it is not an espionage or bribery statute, even if espionage and bribery are often featured. In May 2020, the DoJ published “The Scope of Agency Under FARA,” which provides insight into how they determine that an individual is an agent who acts “at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal.” So the core question for Sue Mi Terry is agency: Did she act under the direction of a foreign government?

Critics of the case note that Terry often acted in opposition to the government in Seoul, which regularly switches between liberal and conservative regimes that have opposing goals. “Her position hasn’t changed across liberal and conservative administrations in Seoul,” Moon said. “Logically, that makes no sense.” Terry was known as a North Korea hawk, the type of figure who would frustrate liberal governments seeking greater engagement with the Hermit Kingdom. “After all, Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ came from the CIA,” he said. “Sue Mi Terry is very well versed in the sociology of CIA intelligence analysis. Her views have been consistent.” Though he disagreed with her approach to North Korea, he found it implausible that she was ever an agent for South Korea.

Her lawyers furthermore argue that South Korea is one of the U.S.’s closest allies. Most recent FARA prosecutions have involved the governments of China, Iran, Russia, or Venezuela. The last major South Korea–related case was “Koreagate” in the 1970s, when a George Town Club founder named Tongsun Park was charged with bribing U.S. congressmen to sway American foreign policy. Intelligence professionals use the acronym MICE — money, ideology, coercion, ego — to describe why someone might become a spy. Park might have fit that profile. But with Terry, it’s harder to identify a potential motive.

Unless, that is, she did it all for the gifts. According to the indictment, one of Terry’s alleged handlers in 2019 gave her a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat he had purchased from a store in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which she then returned for a $4,100 Christian Dior coat, paying the difference out of her own pocket. That same month, according to the indictment, the alleged handler bought her a $2,950 Bottega Veneta handbag from a store in Washington; video footage appears to show the pair at the register with Terry walking away with the bag in hand. Two years later, according to the indictment, another alleged handler bought Terry a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag from a store in Washington, again confirmed by surveillance footage showing both of them at the register. In addition, Terry was seemingly regularly going to dinner with her handlers at “upscale restaurants” in the capital.

The government’s indictment includes images of Terry allegedly receiving a luxury handbag from her handler. Photo: Department of Justice

What the South Koreans received in exchange for these gifts is unclear. Ostensibly the most serious charge — sharing notes with her alleged handler after a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken — looks less serious upon inspection: the meeting was for the State Department to converse off the record with policy experts on North Korea, including Terry and four others, in a “discreet setting.” It is not uncommon for government officials to provide such information to reporters and other interested parties, and prosecutors have not claimed that any classified secrets were shared. (According to Terry’s attorneys, “The notes that Dr. Terry shared were written by her prior to the unclassified meeting between Secretary Blinken and several non-governmental Korean policy experts.”)

There are two instances in which the indictment claims that Terry was encouraged by her handlers to write columns in Foreign Affairs and other places, in which the line between Terry doing basic reporting and sourcing is blurred with smuggling Korean talking points into the niche world of foreign-policy journals. At one point a South Korean official allegedly asked Terry to write an article for a Korean newspaper for a fee of $500 — just about what the average beleaguered freelancer might make for a short column. Unlike the average freelancer, though, Terry once shared a draft of a Foreign Affairs column with a purported South Korean intelligence agent.

In exchange for organizing an event at the Wilson Center celebrating the U.S.’s long-standing partnership with South Korea — called “70 Years of the U.S.-ROK Alliance: The Past and the Future” — the South Koreans allegedly donated $25,418.70 to a gift account at the think tank that was controlled by Terry. In exchange for organizing a happy hour with congressional staffers, the same account received a check for $11,000. (“In fact it is a common practice among think tanks to receive funding from the ROK and other governments,” Terry’s attorneys say.) Prosecutors say such events were an occasion for Korean spies to “spot and assess” congressional staffers as potential sources and recruits. At the happy hour, the staffers received gift bags “containing Yeti-brand tumblers and pamphlets with the logo” of the South Korean Embassy.

Moon, the former South Korean official, acknowledged it was imprudent for Terry to accept the gifts. But he also argued that after years of acting as a liaison, the boundary between diplomacy and friendship can become murky. And unlike many Korean American experts, Terry was the most Korean of them all in manner and tone, which may have put her South Korean counterparts at ease. The fact that she went shopping with her contact to pick out a designer bag — those moments could be read as excursions with a friend rather than acts of bribery.

But another former South Korean government official says it was clearly a bribe. She added that, in Seoul, there has been no mention of Terry since the indictment. It is as if Terry has been completely forgotten or erased, which is the equivalent of calling her guilty.

If prosecutors are to be believed, there is certainly a case to be made that Terry was, in a sense, working for a client as a consultant and fixer, much in the same way she worked for the Wilson Center, drawing income from both streams. Whether that suggests she was working on behalf of the South Korean government to further its geopolitical ends is another matter. And it all suggests that the work of a foreign agent these days, at least among allies, is pretty mundane, a game played for the smallest stakes.

In February, Terry’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case, disputing both the charges and the legality of the investigation itself, and the case is pending. Meanwhile, the personal and professional toll on Terry has already been immense. “There’s a crushing weight of suspicion,” one former FARA-investigation subject told me. “You wake up every day wondering what the DoJ will do next.” Whether she is found guilty or not, Terry’s life and career remain in limbo. At the top of every article she wrote for Foreign Affairs is a disclaimer that cites the FARA case against her and asserts that the publication “requires all contributors to disclose any affiliation or activity that could present a genuine or perceived conflict of interest or call into question the integrity of their work. We take these allegations very seriously.” When I saw Terry at that Tribeca party, she said only one thing to me: “I don’t need any favors. I just want to tell the truth.”

flip.it · by Suki Kim ·

2.

​Excerpts:

North Korea has "never removed" the speakers and "are not willing to remove them", Kim Yo Jong said in a statement published by state media KCNA on Thursday.

"We have clarified on several occasions that we have no will to improve relations with [South Korea]," she said, adding that this stance "will be fixed in our constitution in the future".

South Korea's military said earlier this week that North Korea had removed some of its loudspeakers along the border - days after South Korea dismantled some of its own.

Kim, the deputy director of North Korea's propaganda department, said Seoul's claim was an "unfounded unilateral supposition and a red herring".

Kim Yo Jong: North Korea leader denies removing propaganda loudspeakers at border

BBC

3 hours ago

Koh Ewe

BBC News, Singapore

Getty Images

North Korea says it has "never removed" its propaganda loudspeakers along the border with the South

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister has rebutted South Korea's claims that Pyongyang removed some of its propaganda-blasting loudspeakers along the border.

North Korea has "never removed" the speakers and "are not willing to remove them", Kim Yo Jong said in a statement published by state media KCNA on Thursday.

"We have clarified on several occasions that we have no will to improve relations with [South Korea]," she said, adding that this stance "will be fixed in our constitution in the future".

South Korea's military said earlier this week that North Korea had removed some of its loudspeakers along the border - days after South Korea dismantled some of its own.

Kim, the deputy director of North Korea's propaganda department, said Seoul's claim was an "unfounded unilateral supposition and a red herring".

Besides propaganda messages, South Korea's broadcasts often blasted K-pop songs across the border. while North Korea played unsettling noises such as howling animals.

South Korean residents living near the border had complained that their lives were being disrupted been by the noise from both sides, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Pyongyang considers Seoul's propaganda broadcasts an act of war and has threatened to blow up the speakers in the past.

South Korea's speaker broadcasts resumed in June 2024 after a six year pause under impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol who took a more hardline stance against the North.

They were restarted after Pyongyang began sending rubbish-filled balloons to the South in response to increased tensions.

The relationship appeared to have thawed under new President Lee Jae Myung, who campaigned on improving inter-Korean ties.

South Korea halted its broadcasts along the demilitarised zone shortly after Lee took office in June, in what the country's military described as a bid to "restore trust" and "achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula".

Still, ties between the two neighbours remain uneasy. Earlier this week, North Korea warned of "resolute counteraction" to provocations ahead of joint military drills between South Korea and the US.

3. Hack of North Korean Spy’s Computer Exposes Almost Espionage Operations

​If hackers can do this I want to imagine what NSA and CYBERCOM can do. We need to be able to defeat KJU's all purpose sword.

Hack of North Korean Spy’s Computer Exposes Almost Espionage Operations

techrepublic.com · by Liz Ticong · August 13, 2025

Image: thichaa/Envato

Hackers have infiltrated the computer of a North Korean government spy, stealing and leaking 8.9 GB of secret files, including emails, passwords, and documents exposing links to Chinese hackers. The unprecedented breach lays bare sensitive details of North Korea’s cyber operations.

The hackers, known as Saber and cyb0rg, detailed the break-in in the latest issue of Phrack magazine, distributed at the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas. Their report outlines the theft of data from a member of Kimsuky, a state-sponsored espionage group, revealing stolen tools, internal manuals, and classified information.

A state spy exposed

The target was no ordinary spy, but a working operative inside Kimsuky, a North Korean advanced persistent threat (APT) unit the hackers called “Kim.” On his computer, Saber and cyb0rg say they found the instruments of state espionage: malicious software, network infiltration tools, and code designed to pierce secure systems.

Mixed among the digital weaponry were traces of the man behind the screen, from browsing histories to files transferred between his Windows and Linux machines. He regularly visited popular hacking forums, followed open-source coding projects, and paid for multiple VPN services to mask his online activity. Records also showed he had remotely logged into other computers on his network.

Even his careful operational security could not keep the trove from being revealed in Phrack.

South Korea targeted

The files taken from Kim’s computer contained logs of active phishing campaigns against South Korea’s Defense Counterintelligence Command and other government agencies. Some of the attacks had taken place just three days before the breach.

The logs listed targeted email addresses, server details, and tools used to trick victims into handing over credentials. According to the hackers, the campaigns redirected targets through convincing fake websites before bouncing them to real government portals, making the theft harder to detect.

Also among the recovered data was the complete source code for Kebi, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official email platform. The archive included every major component of the system, from the core code to its web, mobile, and administrative interfaces.

Timestamps suggest the material was taken very recently. As a critical channel for South Korea’s diplomatic communications, Kebi’s exposure could compromise sensitive government correspondence and internal operations.

Was China in on it?

Clues buried in the breached data point east. The operative’s browsing history included Chinese-language hacking sites and forums, along with visits to Taiwanese government and military pages viewed through online translation tools. He also used Google Translate to turn technical error messages into Chinese.

The patterns raise the possibility of operational overlap between Chinese and North Korean hackers. But without independent confirmation, it remains unclear whether this shows active cooperation, shared resources, or simply one operative drawing on widely available Chinese-language tools.

While any role by Chinese counterparts remains uncertain, Pyongyang’s hackers have been far from idle. Recent months have brought campaigns ranging from cryptocurrency theft attempts to custom malware aimed at high-value tech targets.

Read our coverage of a laptop farm scam in which North Korean operatives used stolen identities and remote-controlled tech to infiltrate American companies and steal corporate data.

techrepublic.com · by Liz Ticong · August 13, 2025

4. Nodutdol: the Group Pushing Americans to Support North Korea

​Useful idiots or worse?

Nodutdol: the Group Pushing Americans to Support North Korea

Nodutdol has supporters in academia and among far-left activist groups.

city-journal.org

Stu Smith

Meet the Group Pushing Americans to Support North Korea

Nodutdol has supporters in academia and among far-left activist groups.

/ Politics and Law

/ Eye on the News / Politics and Law

Late last month, a coalition of pro–North Korean activists gathered in New York City. Ostensibly there to defend “Korean independence,” their real purpose was to spread anti-American propaganda and justify the crimes of Pyongyang and other totalitarian regimes.

Nodutdol, an effectively pro-North Korean group, co-hosted the People’s Summit for Korea from July 25 through 27. The event featured professional activists, academics, government officials, and longtime radicals with decades of involvement in left-wing politics. Also present were a stable of revolutionary leftist groups, including the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, the United National Antiwar Coalition, and more.

The conference offered several radical presentations. It included plenary sessions, such as “The Long Revolution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea“ and “Toward a United Front: U.S. Out of Everywhere“; workshops, such as “Surviving Sanctions: Resisting the Imperial Agenda” and “People to People: Reflections from Delegations to North Korea”; and a session for students, titled “Students: Planting the Seeds of the Student Movement.”

Current and former academics featured prominently. Betsy Yoon, an assistant professor of library and information studies at Baruch College and a member of Nodutdol, argued during the “The Long Revolution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea“ plenary that Americans should “internalize the lessons of North Korea’s ongoing revolution.” At the summit, Yoon spoke about no longer being able to travel to North Korea and advised activists in the “imperial core” to “creatively apply our Juche spirit.” Juche is North Korea’s official Communist ideology.

At another plenary entitled “Solidarity and Sovereignty: Anti-Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific,” Vijay Prashad, a former professor at Trinity College, suggested that, in fact, the Soviet Union and China had defeated the Axis Powers in the Second World War. While imperialists and capitalists “would like you to think it was a group of Iowa farm boys” who “landed in Normandy” and won the war, he argued, that is “not true at all.”

As the conference underscored, Nodutdol is making inroads in the academy. One of its members, Minju Bae, teaches at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Perhaps it’s no surprise that a student at an event at NYU praised North Korea for arming the Palestinian resistance.

The event also featured radical activists like Mick Kelly of Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Sara Flounders of the United National Antiwar Coalition. In 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the homes of Kelly and other Freedom Road Socialist Organization members as part of a years-long federal probe into alleged ties to terrorist groups, though no charges were filed. Flounders attended Samidoun’s 50th anniversary party for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization. Just last year, the U.S. designated Samidoun as a fundraising source for the PFLP.

Nodutdol is one of the most influential organizations working inside the United States to rehabilitate North Korea’s image. On its website, the group describes itself as an organization of “diasporic Koreans and comrades based in occupied Indigenous lands known as the United States and Canada.” Its name means “stepping stone,” fittingly, as the group serves as an entry point into a far-left worldview sympathetic to North Korea and hostile to the United States.

The group declares that it organizes “for a world free of imperialism, and for Korea’s re/unification and national liberation,” mirroring that of the North Korean regime. Its materials and presentations are filled with language about comrades, “the belly of the beast,” settler colonialism, occupation, and national liberation—hallmarks of hard-left activism.

Meantime, North Korea’s reach is expanding. In late July, an Arizona woman was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for helping North Korean IT workers secure jobs at more than 300 American companies. Her scheme reached Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 companies, and even the entertainment industry. The IT workers tried to penetrate the federal government but failed.

American popular culture often mocks North Korea, as in films like Team America: World Police and The Interview. But satire can breed complacency. The totalitarian regime in Pyongyang, which rules over an impoverished and oppressed people, is anything but a joke.

North Korea remains closed to the world, but its allies in the United States are not. Organizations like Nodutdol push a narrative that casts North Korea as the victim and America as the villain—and they are gaining traction, recruiting foot soldiers for their long war against the West.

Stu Smith is an investigative analyst with City Journal and provides extensive video documentation on his X Account, @TheStuStuStudio.

Photo by Contributor/Getty Images

Donate

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).

5. Best of: Is the World Ready for the Population Bust?

​A podcast with our good friend and expert economist and demographer, Dr. Nick Eberstat.

Listen to the podcast at this link or read the transcript below.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/best-world-ready-population-bust

Excerpts:

KANISHK THAROOR

And I suppose in terms of those advantages, it seems that at least when we’re looking at demographic trends, countries like Russia, China, even Iran and North Korea, are in a much worse state than the United States.

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

If we simply look at the human resources, China and Russia are both depopulating societies. China is aging very, very, very rapidly. Russia has a long-standing cough that it can't shake. It’s got this health crisis that began under the Soviets that is still dogging the country. Iran is a below-replacement society, which is going to begin shrinking before people appreciate this. The mullahs, by the way, are very aware of the demographic constraints on the national power there. What goes on in North Korea stays in North Korea, except the troops on the Kursk Oblast, I guess, so we don’t really know what the demographic situation is in North Korea, except that we have seen the supreme leader and living god, Kim Jong Un, declaim in alarmed terms about the low birthrate in this country.

So you’ve got aging and shrinking societies in the largest of these countries. So I argue in this piece that the demographic tides are running against the revisionist dictators of Eurasia. That doesn’t mean that any of these countries is harmless. North Korea has a GDP of approximately zero, and it causes all sorts of trouble in the world. So if you have the second-largest economy in the world, China, run by revisionists, you can expect you’re going to be in perhaps for a rather bumpy ride. But that doesn’t mean that the future is going to be open for the dictatorships from the Eurasian heartland.

Best of: Is the World Ready for the Population Bust?

Foreign Affairs · August 14, 2025

Podcast

A Conversation With Nicholas Eberstadt

Published on August 14, 2025

Listen to the Episode

00:00 / 00:00

MP3

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

Episode Details

In an episode released in January 2025, Senior Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt about the global crash in fertility rates and the looming prospect of depopulation.

Over the past century, the world’s population has exploded—surging from around one and a half billion people in 1900 to roughly eight billion today. But according to Eberstadt, that chapter of human history is over, and a new era, which he calls the age of depopulation, has begun. That subject has become even more prevalent in the past year. The United States, for example, recorded its lowest ever birthrate in 2024.

Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute and has written extensively on demographics, economic development, and international security. In a 2024 essay for Foreign Affairs, Eberstadt argued that plummeting fertility rates everywhere from the United States and Europe to India and China point to a new demographic order—one that will transform societies, economies, and geopolitics.

Sources:

“The Age of Depopulation” by Nicholas Eberstadt

The Foreign Affairs Interview is produced by Kanishk Tharoor, Molly McAnany, Ben Metzner, Caroline Wilcox, and Ashley Wood, with audio support from Todd Yeager and Marcus Zakaria and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Irina Hogan.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

This week, we’re pleased to bring you some of the best conversations from our archives. Last year, we spoke with the demographer Nicholas Eberstadt about the global crash in fertility rates and the looming prospect of depopulation. That subject has become even more prevalent in the past year. The United States, for example, recorded its lowest ever birthrate in 2024. I hope you enjoy our conversation with Nicholas Eberstadt. We’ll be back next week with a new episode.

KANISHK THAROOR

Nick, it’s a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, thank you for inviting me.

KANISHK THAROOR

You wrote in our recent issue what is nothing short of a monumental piece titled, “The Age of Depopulation: Surviving a World Gone Gray.” In this piece, you make the case that, due to the collapse of fertility rates around the world, the world’s population is going to begin shrinking. Now, some estimates place that happening as soon as 2053, some in the 2070s or the 2080s, but whenever it might be, it seems to be inevitable. And when this does happen, it’ll be the first time that the world’s population has shrunk since the Black Death of the fourteenth century ravaged Eurasia.

There’s a ton of ground to cover here, but let’s begin by sketching some of the trend lines. In your piece, you take us on a tour of the globe to show how fertility rates are plunging pretty much everywhere. What are some of the surprising things we learn when we spin the globe in this way?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, Kanishk, demographers don’t really have a toolkit for forecasting fertility accurately. But over the past decade, there’s been an acceleration that was entirely unanticipated of the already existing, long-term decline in global fertility, more or less everywhere. Some of the things which I think are kind of jaw dropping are to learn, for example, that in Mexico City, the current birth trends imply less than one baby per woman per lifetime, and that Mexico last year had a lower birth rate than the United States of America for the first time since those numbers were ever collected. That Thailand is down to about one birth per woman per lifetime. I first went to, then called Calcutta, now Kolkata, almost 50 years ago, and it was teeming with children. Now, officials say the fertility level is down again to one birth per woman per lifetime. And even off the coast of Africa, which is the last really high fertility bastion in the world today, a place like Mauritius is down to 1.4 births per woman per lifetime. You need a little bit over two for long-term population stability, not just two, but a little over two, since not everybody survives to childbearing years.

It’s not impossible that the world has already fallen, on a planetary scale, below the level of childbearing necessary for long-term population stability. We can’t tell if that's actually happened yet, but if this has not happened already, it may happen much sooner than people expected.

We know that at least two-thirds of the world’s population was living in sub-replacement venues before the pandemic. We may be up to three-quarters of the world’s population in such places now. It’s happened with staggering speed.

KANISHK THAROOR

It is really striking. And just to underline one of the points you raised, in India, which is the world’s most populous country by most estimates, India has now become a sub-replacement country. And in Calcutta, a city that you described and a city I’ve spent a lot of time in—I grew up there a little bit—the numbers are staggering in that now, according to West Bengal officials, women have, on average, one birth in their lifetime. The only place where fertility seems to be fairly high is sub-Saharan Africa, but even there we're seeing dips. What’s going on, as far as we can tell, in sub-Saharan Africa?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Absolutely right. In the sub-Sahara, as best we can tell from the more limited statistical evidence that we have, the overall birth level is probably 100 percent above the replacement level. So on current patterns, on current trends, that would mean the doubling of each generation. That’s pretty fast population growth. What we’ve seen, however, is that even in the sub-Sahara, there’s been a pronounced and perhaps now accelerating decline. Overall fertility levels in the sub-Sahara have dropped by more than a third since the late 1970s, early 1980s. In Southern Africa, fertility surveys are all pointing towards lower fertility. So the only question really, I think, at the moment, is: Will these continue? Will these accelerate? How long is it going to take until sub-Saharan Africa is no longer the global exception?

KANISHK THAROOR

We’re only a few decades, well, let’s say six, seven decades removed from a time when people around the world were worried about the explosion of population. In the middle of the twentieth century, there was this concern that human populations were growing far beyond our capacity to sustain them, and it is striking when you take a step back and look at the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, we began at around 1.6 billion people on the planet. We ended at six billion people, which is an enormous jump. And I wonder, just to think particularly about the twentieth century, that if, sometime from now, future historians or, indeed, alien historians picking over the bones of our vanished species might find that the twentieth century was incredibly anomalous in human history.

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, it clearly was anomalous because there had never been such a jump in human numbers in so brief a timespan. There’d never been any sort of proportional increase, a tempo like that before. What was missed by many during the population explosion panic was that this surge in human numbers was generated entirely by improvements in health: by pervasive plummets in mortality, by explosive increases in life expectancy, and really by about a doubling of planetary life expectancy at birth between 1900 and the year 2000. Look at what happened, when you had this health explosion: human capabilities increased so much. Per capita income over the course of the twentieth century soared. We didn’t eliminate all extreme poverty, but we made huge inroads in it. Literacy improved virtually everywhere. Skills improved virtually everywhere, and availability of food outpaced this jump in human mouths rather handily. So when we look back at the population explosion, I think one of the most fascinating aspects of it will be how badly so-called experts mis-assessed its significance and its likely consequence.

KANISHK THAROOR

That gets us into one of the braver contentions of your piece. You do come down a little bit definitively in this piece to identify why we are seeing such widespread collapses in fertility, and you attribute that to the simple fact of what people want, of how many children they want to have. And around the world it seems that men and women just want to have fewer kids. You write, “Volition is why even in an increasingly healthy and prosperous world of over eight billion people, the extinction of every family line could be only one generation away.”

I think this topic of low fertility rates and shrinking numbers of children is much discussed these days, and when you hear familiar answers for why this is happening, a lot of material explanations are offered. It could be that it’s now very expensive to have children, so some couples are reluctant to have more than one child or any children at all. It could be that we’re seeing a decline in teenage pregnancies that might be also influencing the lower number of children around. Why are explanations of that sort insufficient and why should we think purely in terms of desire?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, I think maybe I should start by differential diagnosis, at least addressing the question of whether there may be an increase in infertility, in infecundity, which might be the constraint that we’re seeing here, a sort of a precursor to P.D. James’ The Children of Men or whatever. There’s no reason to think that this couldn't eventually happen through estrogen in the water or microplastics or all sorts of other potential contaminants. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the big declines in fertility we're seeing yet are due to environmental factors. They do seem for the most part to be driven by changes in human behavior and most importantly by changes in desired family size.

Why do I say that? There were a lot of things that correlate with declining fertility, including income, education, contraception, you can go through the entire modernization litany. Problem is, there are always exceptions there, and one of the exceptions that I mentioned in the Foreign Affairs piece, for example, is what we’re seeing today in Myanmar, in Burma, one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Myanmar has below-replacement fertility as well, in a non-catastrophic setting. So you don't have to be an affluent society to have parents choosing very small families. Now the question of what considerations go into this choice is an inescapably human one and thus a tremendously nuanced, personal one.

And the reasons for choosing two children or less than two children, I would guess, would be rather different in rural Burma from affluent Seoul in South Korea. What I think we can be pretty confident about is that these new patterns reflect choices that parents have made.

KANISHK THAROOR

If I may just sort of press the point a little bit on particular explanations, what about, say, declining levels of religiosity? Does that inform fertility rates? And then, I suppose, one of the bigger explanations that you hear more often is levels of female education. Isn’t it broadly true that the higher the level of education a woman attains, the fewer children she’s likely to have?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

I tend to think that religiosity and fertility track rather closely. I don’t find that a surprise since, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition and perhaps in all of the Abrahamic faiths, there is this injunction to be fruitful and multiply, and there’s this view of the hereafter where you have a connection to the hereafter through your children and your descendants. And as for education, there has generally been a correspondence between greater educational attainment and smaller family size, but that doesn't hold everywhere anymore.

We've got fascinating exceptions also to the overall patterns of modernity, such as the increase in fertility for Israeli Jewry well above replacement in an affluent, highly educated society in the Middle East. And I think that that further reinforces the importance of volition.

KANISHK THAROOR

It does seem broadly true that having fewer kids is the price we have to pay for a world in which we have fewer teenage pregnancies, women have greater access to public life, to employment, potentially to individual fulfillment and accomplishment. And if that’s the case, is that such a bad thing? Is it not good for women and for men to have greater control over their lives and pursue the forms of accomplishment that are meaningful to them, if indeed that includes not having children?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

I was one of the contrarians way back when who was arguing that governments and NGOs and others didn’t know better than the parents in question how many children they should be having in low-income countries. That was during the population explosion era. I feel the same way now with sub-replacement fertility. I don’t think that there are outsiders or experts who know better than the parents in question how many children parents should be having. The alternative seems rather terrifying.

KANISHK THAROOR

To talk about those outsiders, so to speak: sub-replacement fertility has been a problem in certain societies for a long time now. Think of Japan, for instance, where the phenomenon of the emptying village in the countryside is almost a cultural trope there. But what we’ve seen is that governments have not been able to institute policies that in any reliable fashion can encourage the birthrate to go up in a meaningful way. You would think that by offering incentives, subsidies, other kinds of welfare provisions and benefits, government policy could have an effect in encouraging people to have children, but by and large it doesn’t seem to be the case. Why is that?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

I think this gets back to the whole question of volition. It gets back to the whole question of human agency. I kind of find it reassuring to find out that we’re not rabbits and we’re not robots, and that we can’t be cheerled into having different number of children from what, in general, we’d want, and we can’t be bribed into having a different level of childbearing than we’d want. The record of pronatal policies around the world, as I read it, is that it’s very expensive to get really marginal or tiny fractional changes in long-term childbearing.

So from my standpoint, at least from my perspective in looking at this, it seems to me there is a lot that human beings and their governments and civil institutions of all various sorts can do to adjust to shrinking and aging populations, just the way we adjusted to a growing world, when we had a population explosion. And that the emphasis should be on making the most for human flourishing, for the human beings that exist, rather than trying to count chickens that are never going to hatch.

KANISHK THAROOR

Some people have a rather apocalyptic view of depopulation. They imagine that societies will crumble, anarchy will reign. That doesn’t seem to be your view. You write, “The problems that [depopulation] raises are not necessarily tantamount to a catastrophe. Depopulation is not a grave sentence; rather, it is a difficult new context, one in which countries can still find ways to thrive.”

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Just look at it in the mirror of the population explosion. Look how wrong so many of the experts were about what its consequences would be. It’s quite clear that a shrinking, aging world is something that we're intuitively, almost completely unprepared to encounter, because all of our experience, in ways that we don't even think about, has been framed by a growing world population. We don’t know how to cope with this yet, but human beings are very good at coping. We’re very good at coping. We’re very good at adapting. And given the foundations that we put into place in the twentieth century for routinizing improvements in health, routinizing improvements in education, routinizing improvements in scientific advance and technological progress and innovation, It’s not as if we are in a tightly, relentlessly worsening straitjacket. We’ve got an awful lot of opportunity to help us deal with these inevitable social changes that we’ll be confronting.

KANISHK THAROOR

Well, let’s talk a little bit about those social changes, the major one being that a depopulating world where there are fewer children is invariably going to be an aging world. You’ll have more and more older people and fewer and fewer young people. What would it be like to live in such a society, and specifically in the US context, what new problems would we face that we have not yet encountered?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, certainly aging and shrinking societies will require very different approaches to government policy, but they’re also going to require different approaches for corporations, for communities, for families, for individual behavior. One of the most obvious government policy challenges: financing of social programs. We came up in the twentieth century with this contrivance of pay-as-you-go social programs. You have current earners financing the retirement or the medical care of current retirees. When you live in a world where there are five or six current earners for every retiree, that’s great. You’re getting social benefits on the cheap. As soon as that population pyramid tilts, you’re in a doom loop. You just can’t do it.

And we know enough about how population trends are going to unfold over the next couple of decades because all of the workers for 2040 have already been born, for example. We know enough that we should already be preparing for a set of social guarantees that transcend this old-fashioned pay-as-you-go model. It’s not going to be all sugar and light because some particular group, some particular birth cohort is going to be the one that kind of loses out on the musical chairs. They’ll have to both start financing their own retirement and they’ll have ended up paying for somebody else's.

The way that I think humane and intelligent government policy ought to be working with something like that is to help compensate that particular group, so you come as close as possible to an overall situation where there are winners without losers.

KANISHK THAROOR

At the risk of inviting your optimism, what will be the mark of a country that’s dealing with depopulation well, and then conversely, what will a country that’s struggling to deal with depopulation look like?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, this inescapable challenge of dealing with depopulation is going to be a problem for the entire world economy. Who’s going to deal with it well? The governments and the societies that have the foresight and the social trust to start thinking about how to recalibrate to be nimble and timely in this. There may well be a learning curve and the early pioneers in this may be the ones who have to take the licks on this, but certainly having a foresighted government and having enough social trust so that there can be complex cooperation in the face of a pressure that’s going to require immense complex cooperation.

KANISHK THAROOR

What sorts of policies, at the national or indeed intergovernmental level, could be put in place now to better prepare the world for a future of dwindling national populations?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Everybody will be better off with more money. When you’ve got more money, you’ve got more options. So I would say policies that encourage countries to get rich as fast as they can sustainably can’t hurt. I would think of those as being efforts to improve health, efforts to improve skills, efforts to increase research horizons and knowledge production. People are going to have to pay much more attention, I think, to personal savings and to personal conduct, especially when we get towards the upside-down population pyramid, and that includes looking after one’s own health.

I expect that we’re going to see a world in which longer-living peoples also are longer-working peoples. And I can tell you as a very happily employed senior citizen that there are a lot of great benefits to working past the technical retirement level.

KANISHK THAROOR

So you’re a vision of the future?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, it’s nothing to be afraid of. Let’s put it that way.

KANISHK THAROOR

We haven’t talked yet about migration, which I think is often raised as a potential solution for those countries where low fertility rates mean they’re going to see a great shortfall in the workers they need. Migration from countries that are growing at a faster clip is often suggested as a possible solution. What do you see as the role of migration in the coming decades?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, migration is going to be a great benefit for those states and countries that can, let’s say, have a competitive migration policy, where they attract talent from abroad and where they can absorb and assimilate that talent into loyal and productive newcomers. I’d say that the history of the United States, of Canada, of Australia, of New Zealand have been pretty good at being able to assimilate newcomers, obviously not perfect, but been pretty good on the whole. But not every country seems to be able or willing to do that in the rich world.

KANISHK THAROOR

In addition to migration, another potential solution that’s often raised is the burgeoning areas of automation and artificial intelligence. Do you see any reason to think that those sorts of technologies might help buffer against the worst impacts of depopulation?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Well, of course robotics, of course artificial intelligence, of course all sorts of technological innovations offer a sort of productivity multiplier for aging, shrinking societies. Without getting too fancy about it, it’s another form of mechanization. And for a couple of centuries, human beings have been relying more and more on mechanization to increase human productivity. The great concern, as you know, that is voiced today is whether we might see extraordinary displacement of manpower, even in shrinking societies, with radical innovations in AI and machine learning and so forth. I’m certainly not going to say that that’s impossible.

I would observe that it’s much less likely if we skill up in societies all around the world, because in the race between education and technology, it’s the more educated that seem less likely to be displaced in these great transformations.

KANISHK THAROOR

You are actually fairly sanguine about the prospects of the United States in the coming decades. It is true that the United States actually has, by the standards of other wealthy countries and indeed of its principal geopolitical rivals, a fairly high fertility rate—below replacement level, but still fairly high. And you’ve described the United States in the past as an outlier, but why does the United States remain that kind of outlier and how do you see the United States faring in the era of depopulation?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

Long ago, I described the United States as an exemplar of demographic exceptionalism. That was back in the early 2000s. I think this is still the case, but less absolutely spectacularly so than we would’ve seen a decade and a half ago. The United States has a relatively high level of fertility for an affluent society, although now, unlike a decade and a half ago, it’s below replacement. The United States also has been a magnet for immigration from all around the world, including absolutely, extraordinary, uncanny capacity to attract entrepreneurial and inventor talent from around the world, even though they’re a small portion of the overall flow of migrants.

This being the case, the United States is, as an arithmetic proposition, on a trajectory to continue to increase in total headcount, although rather modestly, over the next couple of decades; its working age population to increase rather modestly over the next couple of decades; its population composition to go gray, but more modestly than in some of the other places we might be looking at. And to the extent that those sorts of trends matter, it’s arguably favorable for the United States of America. If this sounds too “Yankee Doodle Dandy” for people, I should also point to the elephant in the room, which is the litany of problems we have in the United States today, ranging from health to slowdown in educational improvement, to the divisiveness in our society, to a uncanny appetite for financing current social programs on public debt.

There are plenty of headwinds to what I’m describing, but in the unforgiving world of power politics, you don’t compare yourself to the ideal; you compare yourself to whatever else is in the field. And although I would like to see those problems in my own country addressed and alleviated, if we’re doing the clinical comparison, we’d have to say that there are some advantages for the United States in this situation looking forward.

KANISHK THAROOR

And I suppose in terms of those advantages, it seems that at least when we’re looking at demographic trends, countries like Russia, China, even Iran and North Korea, are in a much worse state than the United States.

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

If we simply look at the human resources, China and Russia are both depopulating societies. China is aging very, very, very rapidly. Russia has a long-standing cough that it can't shake. It’s got this health crisis that began under the Soviets that is still dogging the country. Iran is a below-replacement society, which is going to begin shrinking before people appreciate this. The mullahs, by the way, are very aware of the demographic constraints on the national power there. What goes on in North Korea stays in North Korea, except the troops on the Kursk Oblast, I guess, so we don’t really know what the demographic situation is in North Korea, except that we have seen the supreme leader and living god, Kim Jong Un, declaim in alarmed terms about the low birthrate in this country.

So you’ve got aging and shrinking societies in the largest of these countries. So I argue in this piece that the demographic tides are running against the revisionist dictators of Eurasia. That doesn’t mean that any of these countries is harmless. North Korea has a GDP of approximately zero, and it causes all sorts of trouble in the world. So if you have the second-largest economy in the world, China, run by revisionists, you can expect you’re going to be in perhaps for a rather bumpy ride. But that doesn’t mean that the future is going to be open for the dictatorships from the Eurasian heartland.

KANISHK THAROOR

I’ve seen it said that the way that many on the left perceive climate change as a sort of framing existential crisis, that for people on the right depopulation is beginning to serve a similar kind of function. And we see this in political rhetoric, in the rhetoric of individuals like Elon Musk. What’s it been like for you to see your work and the stuff of your work become such a political flashpoint?

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

P.J. O’Rourke, the late, great humorist, had a chapter in a book of his, a book called All the Trouble in the World. It was a chapter about overpopulation, and I think the subtitle was, “Just enough of us, way too much of you.” And there’s often a temptation when people talk about population to frame it in sort of tribalistic terms like that. During the population explosion, I think there was more than a touch of eugenic talk tinge to some of this, even in seemingly enlightened climes. The prospect of extinction has a way of maybe sometimes clarifying one’s thinking. Sometimes it has a way of inflaming people’s thinking.

I would say that what concerns me the most in the United States about low fertility is not the birth numbers per se, but the array of attitudes that are often associated with these: demoralized, worried about the future, the anxiety, the lack of confidence, the lack of patriotism. And it’s those attitudes, rather than the birth numbers, that may have a formative effect on society. And I argue in another essay that I wrote that the United States may be less prepared for low fertility today than it was in the past, given these changing attitudes that we see in the United States. But I don’t think that has to do as much with the numbers as with other things that we associate with the numbers and maybe shouldn’t.

KANISHK THAROOR

Well, on that note, Nick, thanks so much for speaking with us, and thank you again for writing your wonderful essay.

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

It was a pleasure. Thank you.

6. US-led drills risk triggering ‘tidal wave’ threatening peace, North Korea says

​The sole threat to peace is the Kim family regime.

US-led drills risk triggering ‘tidal wave’ threatening peace, North Korea says

State media says recent multilateral drills in Pacific will provoke ‘resistance and retaliation’ within the region

Shreyas Reddy August 14, 2025

https://www.nknews.org/2025/08/us-led-drills-risk-triggering-tidal-wave-threatening-peace-north-korea-says/

The USS America alongside ships from partner nations during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 | Image: U.S. Navy photo by Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Kenneth Melseth via U.S. Department of Defense (July 20, 2025)

U.S.-led multilateral military exercises in the Pacific risk setting off a “tidal wave” threatening the region’s peace and security, North Korea claimed on Thursday, warning that such activities will inevitably provoke “resistance and retaliation” from other countries.

In a commentary, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) criticized Washington and its allies for conducting the large-scale Exercise Talisman Sabre near Australia and multilateral drills in the western Pacific region.

“It is quite clear that the joint military drills of the U.S. and its satellite countries, which continue to escalate military tension while expanding the scope of their activities one after another in the Asia-Pacific region, will entail very negative consequences for the security environment of the regional countries,” KCNA said.

Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025, which ran from mid-July to Aug. 4, represented the largest-ever iteration of the multilateral exercise, featuring some 40,000 troops, over large and small warships and at least 70 fighter jets.

Led by Australian and the U.S. forces, over 30,000 troops from 19 countries carried out sea, ground, air, cyber, space and other joint operations, including live-fire exercises with fighters and long-range missiles. 

Condemning the “very hot and provocative” drills, KCNA warned that this year’s iteration showed that the scope of the annual exercise has expanded to encompass the entire Asia-Pacific region, with offshore training activities taking place off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

On the day Exercise Talisman Sabre ended, the U.K., the U.S. and Japan kicked off drills in the Philippine Sea in conjunction with Australia, Spain and Norway as part of a British carrier strike group’s global tour, with the drills featuring 11 ships and 23 aircraft including fifth-generation fighters.

During the exercise, F-35B stealth fighters from U.S. and UK strike groups landed on Japan’s aircraft carrier Kaga, a move described by London’s defense ministry as a “major statement of allied cooperation.”

However, North Korea framed the “unprecedented” military exercises in quick succession as a serious threat to regional security and warned of a possible counter-response amid “concerns” from other Asia-Pacific countries, without naming any of these nations.

“There is no guarantee that the wind and waves in the west Pacific will not develop into a tidal wave to hit the whole Asia-Pacific region,” KCNA said.

Following recent statements from North Korea’s defense minister and the leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong condemning the upcoming U.S.-ROK Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise, the commentary repeated Pyongyang’s concerns about the allies holding large-scale drills “against the DPRK,” while piling on criticism of the U.K. carrier strike group’s continuing Asia-Pacific operations.

The rhetoric about the joint drills is nothing new for Pyongyang, which frequently portrays military cooperation between Washington and Seoul as a prelude to an invasion of North Korea. However, by linking UFS to other regional exercises, state media is turning its routine complaints into an attempt to show a united front with other powers in the region who are at odds with Washington.

While highlighting these countries’ hope that the Pacific will become “a peaceful zone” as its name implies, KCNA warned that the U.S. must not underestimate their will to respond with force.

“If the U.S. and its satellite countries persist in military actions of disturbing peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region, they will surely face resistance and retaliation by the regional countries,” the commentary read.

Edited by Bryan Betts

7. JCS operations chief suspended over alleged anti-N.K. drones in martial law probe

JCS operations chief suspended over alleged anti-N.K. drones in martial law probe | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Hyun-soo · August 14, 2025

SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- The defense ministry said Thursday it has suspended the head of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) over his alleged involvement in sending military drones to North Korea last year as part of preparations for former President Yoon Suk Yeol's imposition of martial law.

Lt. Gen. Lee Seung-oh, chief of operations at the JCS, was separated from his duties Thursday pending suspension, the defense ministry said, citing an ongoing investigation by a special counsel.

The special counsel team led by Cho Eun-suk listed Lee as a suspect and raided his residence and office last week over suspicions that the JCS dispatched drones to Pyongyang last October in order to provoke the North's retaliation and use it as a pretext for imposing martial law.

Lee reportedly confessed to dispatching drones to Pyongyang on three occasions in October under the orders from former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun.

In this file photo, provided by Yonhap News TV on Dec. 26, 2022, Lt. Gen. Lee Seung-oh, chief of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), briefs reporters on North Korean drones that crossed the Military Demarcation Line into the South's territory. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

sookim@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Hyun-soo · August 14, 2025

8.

​This is not a "reinterpretation" if the Mutual Defense treaty. Some have always interpreted the MDT treaty exactly the way it is written - "mutual defense against threats in the Pacific region." There is no mention of north Korea in the MDT.

Excerpts:

The remarks, delivered in a statement to The Chosun Ilbo and attributed to a State Department spokesperson, marked the first official confirmation that the two governments have begun discussions on what the Trump administration has termed “alliance modernization”—a reconfiguration of the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty to bring it into closer alignment with Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

This emerging dialogue reflects Washington’s growing insistence that its allies assume greater responsibility for regional security. According to The Chosun Ilbo, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau urged Seoul during a vice foreign ministers’ meeting in Tokyo on July 18 to embrace a “future-oriented comprehensive strategic alliance.” Kevin Kim, Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, reportedly echoed that message during working-level consultations in Seoul earlier this month.

At the heart of this shift is a reinterpretation of the treaty’s foundational language. The agreement affirms a commitment to “collective defense in the Pacific area,” and Article III stipulates that an armed attack “in the Pacific” is to be treated as a mutual threat requiring coordinated action. U.S. officials increasingly appear to be signaling that in the event of a Taiwan contingency—or a broader U.S.–China confrontation—Seoul must be prepared to play a more active and defined role.

State Department spokesperson made this expectation explicit: “Through these consultations, both sides are acknowledging this reality, as well as the need to maintain extended deterrence and increase ROK defense burden sharing, with the aim of rebalancing roles and responsibilities between U.S. and Korean forces on the Peninsula.” She added, “We welcome and fully support the ROK’s key role in maintaining security, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, which presents additional opportunities for collaboration.”

US formalizes talks to modernize alliance with South Korea

Washington confirms consultations with Seoul on future of bilateral security posture

https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/07/25/W3IOSYKIZBAMFDQGZ2U75522AU/

By Kim Eun-joong (Washington),

Roh suk-jo,

Park Su-hyeon

Published 2025.07.25. 15:53

Updated 2025.07.29. 05:38

On July 24, the U.S. Department of State signaled a formal shift in the trajectory of the U.S.–South Korea alliance. “The Alliance, which we have maintained and developed for over 70 years, must adapt to a changing regional security environment,” it declared, adding, “The two sides decided to initiate consultations based on a shared understanding of the future direction of the Alliance, including strengthening its capabilities and posture amid an evolving regional security environment.”

The remarks, delivered in a statement to The Chosun Ilbo and attributed to a State Department spokesperson, marked the first official confirmation that the two governments have begun discussions on what the Trump administration has termed “alliance modernization”—a reconfiguration of the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty to bring it into closer alignment with Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

This emerging dialogue reflects Washington’s growing insistence that its allies assume greater responsibility for regional security. According to The Chosun Ilbo, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau urged Seoul during a vice foreign ministers’ meeting in Tokyo on July 18 to embrace a “future-oriented comprehensive strategic alliance.” Kevin Kim, Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, reportedly echoed that message during working-level consultations in Seoul earlier this month.

U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Federal Reserve, on July 24, 2025, in Washington./AP-Yonhap

At the heart of this shift is a reinterpretation of the treaty’s foundational language. The agreement affirms a commitment to “collective defense in the Pacific area,” and Article III stipulates that an armed attack “in the Pacific” is to be treated as a mutual threat requiring coordinated action. U.S. officials increasingly appear to be signaling that in the event of a Taiwan contingency—or a broader U.S.–China confrontation—Seoul must be prepared to play a more active and defined role.

State Department spokesperson made this expectation explicit: “Through these consultations, both sides are acknowledging this reality, as well as the need to maintain extended deterrence and increase ROK defense burden sharing, with the aim of rebalancing roles and responsibilities between U.S. and Korean forces on the Peninsula.” She added, “We welcome and fully support the ROK’s key role in maintaining security, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, which presents additional opportunities for collaboration.”

The statement encapsulates the Trump administration’s broader strategic objective: to enlist allies into a more assertive regional posture vis-à-vis China. This recalibration—financial, military, and structural—is not only about deterring Beijing but also about distributing security burdens that Washington has historically borne alone.

In March, the Pentagon’s Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance identified “deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan” as its principal priority. The full National Defense Strategy (NDS) and accompanying Global Posture Review (GPR), expected as early as August, are likely to codify a reorientation of U.S. forces to reflect that objective. As part of this realignment, the United States is pressing regional allies—including South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines—not only to increase defense spending but also to commit more explicitly to supporting the U.S. position in a potential crisis with China.

Yet despite its enduring role as a linchpin of U.S. security architecture in Northeast Asia, South Korea remains largely outside of newer regional security configurations. Unlike Japan and Australia, Seoul has not joined minilateral initiatives such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) or AUKUS, and remains tethered primarily to the trilateral framework with Washington and Tokyo. That absence has led some in Washington to view Seoul as a potential weak link in the Indo-Pacific’s emerging lattice of security partnerships.

This perception has spurred calls across the U.S. political establishment for a reconceptualization of the Indo-Pacific theater—one that integrates the Korean Peninsula into a broader arc of contested maritime zones, including the East and South China Seas. Japan has already endorsed this “one theater” approach, proposing it to U.S. counterparts, while the Philippines has responded with increased diplomatic and military alignment.

At the center of this rethinking is Elbridge Colby, regarded as the principal architect of the Trump-era defense posture. Now serving as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Colby is leading a comprehensive reassessment of U.S. force deployment globally. His forthcoming iteration of the National Defense Strategy is expected to further institutionalize a doctrine of allied burden-sharing and assertive regional balancing—principles that could soon reshape the U.S.–ROK alliance for a more uncertain Indo-Pacific era.

9. North Korea denies loudspeaker removal but says Trump-Kim ‘meeting’ is possible

​We must not be duped by KJU's political warfare with Juche characteristics. Look at how the regime is trying to drive a wedge in the ROK/US alliance.

North Korea denies loudspeaker removal but says Trump-Kim ‘meeting’ is possible

Kim Yo Jong notes ‘special’ relationship between US and DPRK leaders while spurning improved ties with South

Alannah Hill | Colin Zwirko | Joon Ha Park August 14, 2025

https://www.nknews.org/2025/08/north-korea-refutes-claim-that-propaganda-speakers-were-dismantled/

Kim Yo Jong during a Supreme People's Assembly session | Image: KCTV (Sept. 9, 2022)

The North Korean leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong denied that the country has taken down propaganda loudspeakers in response to the South’s goodwill gestures and said Pyongyang is instead focused on broader U.S. policy change, according to a statement released in state media on Thursday

The DPRK has “never dismantled the loudspeakers deployed along the border, nor do we intend to,” Kim said, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The long statement reiterated DPRK leader Kim Jong Un’s position of seeking a unilateral U.S. policy change and ignoring South Korea as an avenue to diplomacy.

Though Kim Yo Jong suggested Pyongyang has no “message for the U.S.,” she also volunteered that President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un retain “special personal relations,” and that the two can “meet” if the U.S. drops its “outdated way of thinking.” 

Until Washington announces a change, Kim and her brother will “have nothing to do with the U.S.” and such a summit remains “only the ‘hope’ of the U.S. side.”

“We are not at all interested in talks that are obsessed with the irreversible past, and there is no more need to explain the reason,” she said. 

Kim also made a similar announcement two weeks earlier, emphasizing her brother’s “personal relationship” with Trump, while suggesting a willingness to return to talks if Washington officially recognizes Pyongyang’s “irreversible” nuclear program.

• READ MORE: North Korea tests Trump’s will to compromise, dangling a slim path back to talks

This reflects Kim Jong Un’s speeches in recent years clarifying that Pyongyang is content to endure sanctions and keep developing its weapons capabilities until Washington unilaterally announces a new policy.

Kim Yo Jong began Thursday’s statement by criticizing ROK media for “dreaming” that Russian leader Vladimir Putin, after his phone call with Kim Jong Un this week, will convey Kim’s thoughts about the U.S. to Trump during their meeting in Alaska this Friday. 

She then suggested this would be unnecessary since her brother’s U.S. policy is simple and already public, presumably referring to her past demands that Washington drop its “hostile policy” and convince Pyongyang it is serious about accepting North Korea’s nuclear status.

The rest of the statement was dedicated to convincing South Korea — whom she called a mere “servant” to U.S. policy — that efforts to improve inter-Korean relations will be completely ignored, as Pyongyang is focused on Washington.

Her remarks come after Seoul said there were signs the DPRK was dismantling some of its propaganda loudspeakers near the inter-Korean border over the weekend as a reciprocal move, days after South Korea removed its own loudspeakers used in psychological warfare. 

“It appears to me that the current South Korean administration is trying to undo measures unilaterally taken during the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, and then receive praise as if it had accomplished something significant, hoping to elicit some kind of response from someone,” Kim Yo Jong said. 

She also addressed the announcement last week that South Korea and the U.S. will conduct their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) drills from Aug. 18 to 28, but will postpone about half of the planned field training exercises (FTXs) until September due to “extreme heat.” 

“On the issue of joint military drills as well, they are trying desperately to look like they are working to ease tensions by talking about adjustments or postponements — but such actions are neither worthy of praise nor anything more than futile efforts.”

Kim said Pyongyang has “no interest” in steps taken by Seoul, such as altering military drills or removing propaganda equipment, and accused the South of trying to shift blame for heightened tensions. 

“Whether South Korea dismantles loudspeakers, suspends broadcasts, delays or scales down drills — we do not care and we are not interested.”

She reiterated that North Korea has “no intention” of improving ties with South Korea and said this stance will be formally enshrined in the country’s constitution.

Kim Yo Jong issued a similar statement last month insisting that North Korea will “never” reconcile with the South.

In response to Kim’s latest remarks, South Korea’s National Security Office reportedly issued a statement urging North Korea to remember that “small actions to restore trust and ease tensions between the two Koreas must accumulate for the road to greater peace to open.”

The office added that her remarks underscore the “high wall of distrust” between the North and South. 

South Korea’s foreign minister Cho Hyun also said Thursday that Washington will not accept the DPRK’s demand to be recognized as a nuclear-armed state.

“It’s clear that the U.S. position so far is that North Korea cannot possess nuclear weapons. I think there will have to be some back-and-forth between the two sides before dialogue can resume,” Cho explained. 

Cho added that, during his visit to Washington in July, he told the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several White House aides that “President Trump’s leadership will be necessary to create a new breakthrough in the current situation.”

A North Korean soldier in front of border loudspeakers, and South Korean soldiers removing loudspeakers near the inter-Korean border | Images: NK News, ROK defense ministry

LOUDSPEAKER SAGA

Facing questions about Kim’s denial at a regular defense ministry briefing on Thursday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told reporters that the “military provided facts based on what we observed, and I think we need to be careful not to be swayed by the other side’s intentions in their announcements.” 

“Such a phenomenon occurred and we explained it. We also said that whether dismantling had taken place across all areas required further verification. We were in a stage of continued monitoring,” JCS spokesperson Col. Lee Sung-jun said. 

Since the JCS’ observation, South Korean media has reported that Pyongyang took down only two of roughly 40 loudspeakers, reinstalling one the same day.

Seoul’s defense ministry declined to say how many loudspeakers North Korea had dismantled, but told NK News on Thursday that it “will maintain its military readiness posture while continuing to implement effective measures to reduce military tensions in support of the government’s efforts to build peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

During a regular cabinet meeting Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung had urged North Korea to match Seoul’s removal of border loudspeakers, calling them “costly and unnecessary.” 

“Through such reciprocal steps, I hope dialogue and communication between the two Koreas will gradually open,” he said. 

Pyongyang previously turned off its own loudspeaker broadcasts directed at the South a day after Lee ordered the cessation of ROK propaganda broadcasts on June 12.

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, interpreted Thursday’s statement from Kim Yo Jong as a move to “shut down expectations” that North Korea would continue to reciprocate any goodwill gestures from South Korea, seeking to avoid blame for worsening tensions.

“From the North’s viewpoint, actions such as halting leaflet launches or removing loudspeakers are merely rollbacks of measures initiated by the South in the first place,” Hong told NK News. 

The expert also noted that Kim sought to dismiss speculation that a potential U.S.-Russia summit could be used to relay North Korea’s intention.

“From Pyongyang’s perspective, the North Korea issue should be dealt with only in direct DPRK-U.S. negotiations sparked by a change in Washington’s stance without third-party involvement,” he observed. 

Hong added that the timing of the statement was likely “deliberate,” as Lee Jae-myung is expected to stress inter-Korean peace in a Liberation Day speech on Friday.

Jeongmin Kim and Seung-Yeon Chung contributed reporting to this article. Edited by Kristen Talman and Bryan Betts

Updated throughout with additional details, expert analysis at 12:13 p.m. KST on Aug. 14

10. Editorial: S. Korea's Liberation Day only shows a divided nation

Editorial: S. Korea's Liberation Day only shows a divided nation

https://www.chosun.com/english/opinion-en/2025/08/15/VEN4TV75VVFFNBYJC6QCYI5XMA/

By The Chosun Ilbo

Published 2025.08.14. 09:02

On Aug. 13, 2025, the Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul was set up for the 80th Liberation Day celebration. The presidential office plans to invite about 10,000 citizens to President Lee Jae-myung’s national inauguration ceremony, which will be held alongside the Liberation Day celebrations. /News1

Come 80th National Liberation Day on Aug. 15, the People Power Party and the Reform Party have decided not to attend the afternoon events celebrating South Korea’s independence at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. Celebrations for the special day will be broken up into two sessions—morning and afternoon. In the afternoon, an inauguration ceremony for President Lee Jae-myung is scheduled. The conservative parties stated that they will only attend the official morning event, and be absent for the afternoon inauguration ceremony.

The opposition is refraining attendance at the president’s appointment ceremony because of the pardons granted for Liberation Day. They argued that the pardons for some ruling-party figures—just two months after the president took office—is unacceptable, and this sentiment is shared by many citizens. Among those pardoned are the former justice minister Cho Kuk and his wife, who conspired in their child’s college admission fraud, undermining the education system. Former lawmaker Yoon Mee-hyang, who was convicted for embezzling donations meant for “comfort women,” women and girls forced into sexual slavery during Japan’s occupation in Korea, was also pardoned. Additional pardons were given towards former mayor of Seongnam Eun Soo-mi, who was sentenced to two years in prison for bribery, and former Vice Justice Minister Lee Yong-gu, convicted of assaulting a taxi driver and attempting to destroy evidence.

Former Presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak have also stated their absence for the latter part of the celebrations. The president’s ally, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), announced that it would skip the event as well, citing the National Assembly’s failure to pass the yellow envelope bill.

Heavy controversy was sparked when the president’s inauguration ceremony was announced on Korea’s National Liberations Day. Critics worried that it would detract from the significance of celebrating the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation. This year’s celebration already lacks publicity from political turmoil from martial law and impeachment, just like how the March First Movement and the founding anniversary of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea were celebrated without much attention. Many argue that Liberation Day should have an entire dedication for its own commemorations.

Even so, President Lee’s Decision to hold his inauguration ceremony on the 80th Liberation Day reflects his desire to frame the inauguration as a historic moment in modern Korean history. The martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment, and his own presidential election victory are referred to as the “Revolution of Light.” All of these seem to be taken as legacies of the March First Movement and National Liberation Day, April Liberation, and the Gwangju Uprising.

However, with both parties declining attendance to the ceremony, the president’s hopes have been dimmed. What should have been a wholesome, unifying occasion for the 80th Liberation Day is only highlighting a divided nation along ideological and political lines.

11. Ministry of Unification Plans to Reactivate Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea

​KJU hears the sound of cash. And will the Korean workers from the north be treated well? Will they be able to keep the full wages they earn?

Ministry of Unification Plans to Reactivate Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea

businesskorea.co.kr · by Jung Min-hee · August 14, 2025

Minister of Unification Chung Dong-young (center) poses for a commemorative photo with the standing co-chairs of the Unification Vision Citizens’ Council at the Government Complex Seoul on Aug. 12. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Unification)

The government has reportedly begun work to re-establish the Kaesong Industrial District Foundation (Kaesong Foundation) to reactivate the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Even under North Korea sanctions, the government intends to identify inter-Korean exchange and cooperation projects in advance, so that when conditions ripen, such as easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, inter-Korean economic cooperation, including the Kaesong Industrial Complex, can be promoted to boost the sluggish potential growth rate.

According to related ministries on Aug. 13, the Ministry of Unification has decided to re-establish the Kaesong Foundation, which was dissolved in January last year, to reactivate the Kaesong Industrial Complex and has begun practical preparations. Specifically, the ministry plans to establish a legal basis by newly enacting enforcement decrees and ministry notices based on the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund Act. Along with this, it has also begun full-scale preparations, such as commissioning research projects to national research institutes like the Korea Institute for National Unification regarding inter-Korean economic cooperation projects, including the reactivation of the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The re-establishment of the Kaesong Foundation requires deliberation and resolution by the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Promotion Committee (IKECPC), and coordination between related ministries such as the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Justice is also planned. In the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, the IKECPC was criticized for being mostly conducted through written resolutions and being formalistic. However, this administration has decided to switch the IKECPC to official face-to-face meetings and introduce a method of deliberation and resolution through agenda reporting and discussion.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance has also decided to actively support such inter-Korean economic cooperation projects through the main budget. First, it is strongly considering restoring the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund budget to the level before the Yoon Suk Yeol administration. In particular, it plans to significantly increase the budget proportion for inter-Korean economic cooperation areas such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The budget for inter-Korean economic cooperation areas was significantly cut by 42.3% and 21.3% last year and this year, respectively. While the Ministry of Unification’s budget was reduced by 22.7% and 3.7% under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, the new government plans to increase the budget again on the premise of restoring inter-Korean relations. A high-ranking official from the Ministry of Economy and Finance said, “Inter-Korean economic cooperation is an investment that can contribute to the national economy in the long term, even if results are not immediately apparent,” adding, “We will secure fiscal capacity and provide support step by step.”

If discussions on resuming North Korea-U.S. dialogue progress during the Korea-U.S. summit scheduled for Aug. 25 and subsequent diplomatic schedules, the clock for resuming inter-Korean economic cooperation is expected to speed up. Exploring and promoting inter-Korean exchange, cooperation, and economic cooperation is one of President Jae-myung Lee’s presidential campaign promises. The pledge book includes, under the title of exploring and promoting inter-Korean exchange and cooperation, promoting inter-Korean cooperation related to the climate crisis, exploring the resumption of inter-Korean cultural and sports exchanges, and maintaining the foundation for exchange and cooperation, such as supporting inter-Korean economic cooperation businesses.

In particular, the government has also begun preemptive preparations to fully implement economic cooperation when conditions are met, such as progress in North Korea-U.S. dialogue. Projects that can be pursued when conditions are met include reactivating the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the Rajin-Khasan project, North Korea’s re-entry into the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI), and joint use of the Han River estuary.

The reactivation of the Kaesong Industrial Complex is expected to have significant economic effects in various aspects, including strengthening the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing, increasing income for North Korean residents, and building trust between South and North Korea. According to the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), the cumulative economic growth effect of operating the Kaesong Industrial Complex for 30 years amounts to 159.2 trillion won.

Minister of Unification Chung Dong-young also made clear his intention for reactivation in a recent meeting with the chairman of the Kaesong Industrial Complex Companies Association, saying, “The dream of the Kaesong Industrial Complex from 20 years ago suffered a temporary setback, but I hope we can start walking again to revive that dream and make it a reality.” The Kaesong Industrial Complex, which began full-scale operation starting with a pilot complex in 2004 and functioned as the only channel for inter-Korean economic cooperation, was completely suspended in February 2016 due to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. A high-ranking government official said, “If inter-Korean economic cooperation can be achieved, reaching a potential growth rate in the 3% range is certainly possible,” adding, “Even if we can’t do it right now, we are preparing (economic cooperation projects) so that we can proceed whenever conditions are met.”

businesskorea.co.kr · by Jung Min-hee · August 14, 2025

12. Russian Duma chief, pro-Putin singer Shaman land in North Korea for festivities

Russian Duma chief, pro-Putin singer Shaman land in North Korea for festivities

Russian officials, artists set to take part in celebrations for 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan

https://www.nknews.org/2025/08/russian-duma-chief-pro-putin-singer-shaman-land-in-north-korea-for-festivities/

Anton Sokolin August 14, 2025

GIFT THIS ARTICLE PRINT

Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin and pop singer Shaman | Images: Duma, Shaman via Instagram, edited by NK News

Russia’s parliamentary chief and the patriotic pop singer Shaman arrived in Pyongyang early Thursday to join celebrations for the 80th anniversary of North Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, the State Duma and DPRK state media reported.

The first delegation led by Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Duma, is set to have a “series of meetings” and take part in the celebrations, the lower house of the Russian parliament said on its website.

Volodin was welcomed at the airport by DPRK honor guards and top officials: Choe Ryong Hae, head of the DPRK’s rubberstamp parliament’s standing committee; his deputy Kang Yun Sok; head of the Supreme People’s Assembly Pak In Chol; vice foreign minister Kim Jong Gyu; and Ri Chol, a parliamentary official in charge of promoting DPRK-Russia ties.

The official’s large entourage includes multiple deputies and the head of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party Leonid Slutsky, as well as Duma committee chiefs overseeing culture and defense affairs Olga Kazakova and Andrei Kartapolov.

Other officials include Kazbek Taysaev from the Russian Communist Party, who heads the interparliamentary friendship group with the DPRK, along with the heads of committees in charge of security and anti-corruption, Commonwealth of Independent States affairs and Eurasian integration, according to the Duma press release.

The lower house later reported that Volodin and Choe held talks on “developing interparliamentary dialogue” and “new cooperation formats” to boost ties between the Duma and Supreme People’s Assembly. 

Volodin proposed creating “high-level commissions” to that end, according to the Duma. He also thanked the DPRK leadership and people for providing help to fend off Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, stressing that Russia will never forget the North Korean soldiers’ sacrifice. 

In turn, Choe praised Soviet troops who “together with Korean revolutionary fighters took part in battles to liberate our homeland, shedding their blood and giving their precious lives,” footage posted by the Duma shows.

Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin’s arrival at Sunan International Airport on Aug. 14, 2025 | Image: Duma

1

2

3

4

5

The second delegation to arrive in the DPRK capital features pop icon Shaman, who rose to stardom on a wave of nationalism in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Red Star Ensemble under the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces and the Aerospace Forces Ensemble of the Russian defense ministry make up his entourage, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Andrei Malyshev, Russia’s deputy culture minister, is leading the delegation, according to KCNA, which is also set to take part in festivities marking National Liberation Day. Malyshev visited Pyongyang in June, joining culture minister Olga Lyubimova, who met leader Kim Jong Un.

While it is Shaman’s first visit to North Korea, his work is not completely unknown to the DPRK public, after North Korean artist Kim Ok Ju performed his song “We Will Rise” at a welcoming concert for Putin in Pyongyang last year. The singer later invited Kim to visit Russia after being impressed by her performance.

Russia’s Channel One briefly interviewed Shaman in Pyongyang, with the singer saying that his troupe is set to do some sightseeing around the city and rehearse their show before a concert on Friday. Asked what songs he will perform, Shaman said “good and right ones.”

The channel added that Volodin’s delegation will continue its work in the country on Friday, noting that the official is expected to meet leader Kim Jong Un as well.

Shaman during an interview with Russia’s Channel One on Aug. 14, 2025 | Image: Screengrab from Channel One

1

2

3

4

5

Shaman is also set to perform at Intervision 2025, Russia’s answer to Eurovision following the country’s ban from the European singing contest. Moscow has reportedly invited North Korea to take part in the event.

Volodin’s delegation arrived aboard an Il-96 (tail number RA-96014), the Duma’s photos showed. The jet is known to carry Russian high-level officials to North Korea, most recently secretary of Russia’s Security Council Sergei Shoigu in June.

Flightradar24 aviation data showed that another Russian government Tu-214 plane (RA-64521) reached the DPRK capital slightly ahead of Volodin, most likely carrying Shaman’s delegation. Unlike Volodin’s aircraft, the Tu-214 didn’t fly through Chinese airspace, making a long detour to the Russian Far East before reaching the DPRK.

The route of Vyacheslav Volodin’s Il-96 from Moscow to Pyongyang via Chinese airspace on Aug. 14, 2025 | Image: Flightradar24

1

2

The delegation’s arrival comes as Putin and Trump are set to hold talks about ending the Ukrainian conflict in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15, with one expert previously assessing that the two leaders may discuss the DPRK’s involvement in the conflict on the Russian side.

Putin and Kim held a phone call Tuesday to discuss the upcoming Alaska talks and exchange greetings ahead of Liberation Day.

North Korea has sent over 12,000 troops to repel Kyiv’s forces from the Kursk region and provided massive deliveries of missiles and weaponry to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The appearance of Russian lawmakers and artists also follows an undisclosed Russian military flight to Pyongyang last Friday and two separate visits by possible Russian military cargo planes earlier this week.

Edited by Alannah Hill

Updated on Aug. 14 at 3:16 p.m. with details on Volodin-Choe talks and at 4:39 p.m. with Shaman’s interview

13.

​Yes his leadership is key:

President Trump did something during his first term that no president had done: “He gave it a shot.” He met Kim and he offered him a future. But it was Kim Jong Un who failed to appreciate the opportunity he had. Now in his second term President Trump has the opportunity to implement new elements of policy and strategy that have never before been attempted. These include a human rights upfront approach that keeps human rights on all agendas, a sophisticated and holistic information campaign, and the support for the Korean people's pursuit of a free and unified Korea. There are few pundits who see the opportunities that both South Korea with its 8.15 Unification Doctrine and Kim Jong Un with his new hostile policy toward the South are providing to the U.S. and ROK/U.S. alliance. It is time to recognize that the only path to denuclearization is through unification. Most importantly, the prevention of war and nuclear use, and the long term outcome on the Korean peninsula are important to the national security and national prosperity of the U.S.

Trump's leadership key in North Korea talks: FM

koreaherald.com · by Ji Da-gyum · August 14, 2025

Seoul hopes Lee’s first visit to Tokyo will clear up misunderstanding that his government is anti-Japan

Foreign Minister Cho Hyun speaks during a press conference at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul on Thursday. (Yonhap)

The resurrection of long-stalled nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea will hinge on US President Donald Trump’s leadership, with an inevitable tug-of-war over the negotiations’ ultimate goal, Seoul’s top diplomat said Thursday.

“As for the current situation, I can say that we expect President Donald Trump’s leadership to produce some progress,” South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said during his first news briefing with local media at the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Seoul.

"We are closely coordinating with the US, consulting on preparations and related matters as to how dialogue between North Korea and the US is currently proceeding," Cho added, declining to share further details.

Asked whether substantive behind-the-scenes work was underway for dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington or if it was still only at the conceptual stage, Cho explained, “If North Korea engages in dialogue with the US, it will likely demand that Washington recognize and accept its status as a nuclear-weapon state.”

“However, for now, the US maintains that North Korea cannot possess nuclear weapons. Therefore, a push-and-pull between the two sides is inevitable.”

Speaking at the briefing on condition of anonymity, a high-ranking official further explained that Washington and Pyongyang would have to find a middle ground to restart nuclear negotiations.

“How will US-North Korea dialogue proceed? Will we allow it to move toward nuclear arms control talks as North Korea wishes? Just as it would be impossible to conduct negotiations solely on the premise of complete denuclearization, it would also be impossible to recognize North Korea as a nuclear-weapons state and to hold arms control talks on that basis,” the official said.

“Therefore, the two sides will have to find common ground somewhere and begin negotiations from there.”

Nuclear talks have been effectively suspended since the abrupt breakdown of the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Trump in February 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Lee's trip to Tokyo

Speaking at the briefing, Cho also underscored that President Lee Jae Myung’s decision to make Japan the destination of his first solo overseas trip — ahead of a visit to the US — reflects his administration’s “pragmatic, reality-based” foreign policy.

Lee has notably broken from a longstanding practice; presidents in governments launched after the 1987 constitutional revision have typically chosen the United States for their first solo overseas trip. The sole exception was his predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, who met then-US President Joe Biden in Seoul in May 2022, just 11 days after taking office.

“I understand that it is unusual for the president to visit Japan before visiting the US, and for the foreign minister to choose Japan as the first country to visit,” Cho said. “But this was possible because the Lee Jae Myung administration pursues a pragmatic, reality-based approach.”

Lee is slated to visit Tokyo from Aug. 23-24 for his second in-person meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba before traveling to the US for his first summit with Trump on Aug. 25.

Cho himself also visited Tokyo first in late July as his first overseas trip before his talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington.

“It is because we thought it natural to first talk with Japan, whose position is in many ways similar to ours, before visiting the US,” Cho said.

The unnamed official explained that Cho’s first trip to Tokyo was directed by President Lee. Against that backdrop, the president will visit Japan en route to the US.

“Such a sequence of visits is partially considered to address certain misconceptions or stigmas about the Lee Jae Myung administration,” the official said. He added that when the president visits Japan and then the US, "any prejudices about our government held in the US" that the Lee government is anti-Japan will be completely dispelled.

On Japan policy, Cho said Seoul would pursue a “multitrack approach,” dismissing the long-held notion of a two-track approach that separates historical disputes stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from efforts to strengthen economic and security cooperation.

Cho underscored that the two-track approach is too simplistic for Seoul and Tokyo, which face a wide range of intertwined issues — from the shifting global order to shared challenges such as population decline and the extinction of rural communities.

“Putting certain issues on one track and others on another is not that simple. In the end, the tracks intersect and influence each other,” Cho said. “So a multitrack approach might be more appropriate.”

dagyumji@heraldcorp.com

koreaherald.com · by Ji Da-gyum · August 14, 2025

14. Defense minister, U.S. lawmakers discuss alliance, security situation on Korean Peninsula

Defense minister, U.S. lawmakers discuss alliance, security situation on Korean Peninsula | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Hyun-soo · August 14, 2025

SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back on Thursday met with visiting U.S. lawmakers, and discussed the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and the South Korea-U.S. alliance, the defense ministry said.

In a meeting with Rep. Richard McCormick (R-GA) and Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), Ahn stressed that U.S. Congress' "steadfast support" for the alliance has laid the groundwork for the stable development of relations between the two nations, according to the ministry.

He also thanked U.S. Congress' "unwavering" support for Washington's commitment to providing extended deterrence to South Korea and maintaining a combined defense posture.

In response, the U.S. representatives shared the view that U.S. troops stationed in South Korea have been playing a key role in deterring North Korean threats, and maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula.

Ahn also requested U.S. Congress' support for cooperation between the two nations in the shipbuilding as well as maintenance, repair and overhaul sectors.

This photo, provided by the defense ministry, shows Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back (2nd from L) speaking with U.S. lawmakers visiting South Korea on Aug. 14, 2025. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

sookim@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by Kim Hyun-soo · August 14, 2025

15. Chinese ambassador welcomes Lee's criticism of anti-China rallies

​Did the President criticize the recent anti-American protests as well?

Excerpts:

During a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Lee criticized the anti-China rallies as being "rife with profanity and hateful remarks that went beyond freedom of expression."

Lee said such rallies do not align with South Korea's global status as "a model nation for democracy that values diversity and inclusiveness."

In July, the Chinese Embassy sent a formal letter requesting enhanced security against the protests.

Chinese ambassador welcomes Lee's criticism of anti-China rallies | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by Woo Jae-yeon · August 14, 2025

SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Dai Bing on Thursday welcomed President Lee Jae Myung's recent remarks criticizing anti-China protests near the embassy in Seoul and expressed hope for a swift resolution.

On his X account, the ambassador said he "thinks highly" of Lee's attention to the rallies, noting they stem from what he called "political lies" regarding Chinese election interference spread by right-wing groups.

Dai added that he believed the people of both nations would distinguish the truth from such "lies" meant to tarnish China's reputation.

The ambassador urged a swift resolution to the matter, saying it would help the ongoing development of the bilateral relationship.

During a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Lee criticized the anti-China rallies as being "rife with profanity and hateful remarks that went beyond freedom of expression."

Lee said such rallies do not align with South Korea's global status as "a model nation for democracy that values diversity and inclusiveness."

In July, the Chinese Embassy sent a formal letter requesting enhanced security against the protests.

This file image shows an anti-China protest rally held in February 2025 near the Chinese Embassy in Seoul. (Yonhap)

jaeyeon.woo@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by Woo Jae-yeon · August 14, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com