Hungry and impoverished North Koreans are hunting, eating and selling animals from tigers to badgers, threatening the survival of endangered species, a new study has found.
A team of British and Norwegian scientists concluded that the North Korean government and black marketeers profit from the trade of wildlife products for food, skins and furs, and the sale of bones, paws and dried organs for use in traditional remedies.
A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink-black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right.
The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump.
The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence. But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil — a move that, if detected, not only could sink negotiations but also could lead to a hostage crisis or an escalating conflict with a nuclear-armed foe.
The most shockingly disturbing issue out of this leak to @nytimes revealing a SEAL raid on NK is what it shows about the national security state’s willingness to strategically leak highly classified info (clearly a hugely sensitive op) to push its own destructive narrative… https://t.co/3MEM9AbOgd
— Ross Coulthart (@rosscoulthart) September 5, 2025
h/t DS
Russian president Vladimir Putin hailed North Korean troops sent to fight in Ukraine as “heroic” in a letter to Kim Jong-un, North Korean state media reported on Friday.
In a letter marking the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule, Putin recalled how Soviet Red Army units and North Korean forces fought together to end Japan’s colonial occupation.
“The bonds of militant friendship, goodwill and mutual aid which were consolidated in the days of the war long ago remain solid and reliable even today,” Putin said in the letter revealed by North Korean state media.
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.
Once again Canada was ahead of the curve! From way back in 2012.
Poor UBC Is So Ronery! They’re Under Attack From Evil Right Wing Blogger Blazingcatfur!
Last year I wrote about UBC’s dalliance with the prison nation North Korea. It’s an unseemly effort spearheaded by Professor Kyung-Ae Park & Professor Paul Evans both of whom contribute to the North Korean propaganda site CanKor, which in OJ like fashion, promises to find the real truth about their beloved socialist paradise. Others have also questioned UBC’s association with the murderous North Korean regime, so I don’t think it’s just me.
In March 2020, about the time the Covid pandemic started, Christina Chapman, a woman who lived in Arizona and Minnesota, received a message on LinkedIn asking her to “be the US face” of a company and help overseas IT workers gain remote employment.
As working from home became the norm for many people, Chapman was able to find jobs for the foreign workers at hundreds of US companies, including some in the Fortune 500, such as Nike; “a premier Silicon Valley technology company”; and one of the “most recognizable media and entertainment companies in the world”.
The employers thought they were hiring US citizens. They were actually people in North Korea.
A major accident occurred during the launch ceremony of a new North Korean warship on Thursday, which Kim Jong-un denounced as a “criminal act”.
Kim, who witnessed the failed launch of the 5,000-ton destroyer, declared the incident a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness” and warned it “could not be tolerated”.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the accident at the eastern port of Chongjin was caused by a loss of balance while the vessel was being launched.
North Korea’s newest 5,000-ton destroyer was severely damaged during its launch.
The malfunction caused the stern to slip early into the water, crushing parts of the hull and leaving the bow stuck on the shipway.
Kim was present on the venue and called it disgraceful!!!
They… pic.twitter.com/PzXar0eNaY
— DEF Talks by Aadi Achint (@AadiAchint) May 22, 2025
‘It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death,’ says Kwon Hyuk, as he remembers his time running a concentration camp in North Korea.
‘Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.’
As chief of management at Camp 22, buried in the remote mountains of North Hamgyong, it was once his job to watch the cruel experiments on political prisoners.
North Korea has become the world’s third-largest holder of bitcoin after the governments of the United States and Britain, after the success of hackers stealing cryptocurrency in audacious online attacks.
According to data published by a cryptocurrency monitoring company, North Korea’s biggest and most successful cyber-hacking organisation, Lazarus, holds a total of 13,580 bitcoin, worth £886 million, after a record-breaking theft last month.
State-backed North Korean hackers have stolen $1.5bn (£1.2bn) of cryptocurrency in the largest heist in history.
Agents from Pyongyang were able to breach the systems of Dubai-based exchange Bybit to steal the digital coin Ether, according to security analysts.
The hackers stole more cryptocurrency in one attack than all the funds stolen by North Korean cyber criminals in 2024, when the rogue state’s cyber attackers made off with around $1.3bn in digital coins, according to cryptocurrency analysts Chainalysis.
The last written notes of a North Korean soldier have revealed how Pyongyang’s troops are being used as “bait” to lure out and shoot down Ukrainian drones.
The diary of the dead man, published by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, described the reckless tactic along with expressions of love for Kim Jong-un and a “longing” to return to his homeland.
On one notebook page, a crude drawing shows a stickman soldier breaking cover to attract the attention of a drone, while his two comrades lie in wait to shoot it down.
The war in Ukraine is providing North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, with what he apparently reckons is a rationale for attacking South Korea. The link between Russia’s campaign against Ukraine and North Korea’s threats against South Korea emerged during a visit to Pyongyang by the Russian defense minister.
Mr. Kim told the visiting minister, Andrei Beloussov, that use of long-range weapons by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gave Russia “the right to self-defense” against those providing the weapons. The NATO allies, led by President Biden, are to blame for Ukraine firing “long-range strike weapons,” Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency quoted Mr. Kim as saying.
The Russia-North Korea-China relationship is not an equilateral triangle but an evolving alliance with conflicting interests, and reportedly beginning to show signs of fracture and lack of trust.
Now that North Korean troops have joined Russian forces in fighting a democratic country, Ukraine, the global ramifications of this East-West coalitional warfare have darkened. An alliance of aggressive dictatorships are directly confronting the free West.
Hermit kingdoms usually keep themselves to themselves, but now, North Korea is reinventing the moniker by which it has long been known. The country may have the world’s fourth largest military, numbering nearly 1.5 million – out of a population of 26 million – but when the first tanks invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, few observers would have anticipated North Korea’s actual involvement in the ensuing war. It is not only Ukrainian intelligence reports which, this week, raised the possibility that over 12,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to aid Russia’s war effort. Only a few hours ago, South Korea’s intelligence agency has confirmed this grim reality – troops have now arrived.
Ukraine warned of a “huge” escalation risk on Saturday as hundreds of elite North Korean troops were predicted to enter the battlefield within days in support of Russia.
Around 10,000 of Pyongyang’s soldiers are preparing to join Moscow’s army, according to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and South Korean intelligence.
Video released on Friday showed North Korean troops arriving at Russian bases in the country’s far-east, picking up military equipment in long queues.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are sharing their “innermost thoughts” at a summit in North Korea, at which they have resolved to build “a new multi-polar world” and to unite against the US-led international order.
The two leaders will spend the day together in ceremonial events and face-to-face discussions during which they are expected to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty”. It will formalise a friendship which has already resulted in North Korean munitions being fired by Russian troops on the battlefields of Ukraine.
