North Korea

The old habits of secrecy haven’t left Kim Kuk-song.

It has taken weeks of discussions to get an interview with him, and he’s still worried about who might be listening. He wears dark glasses for the camera, and only two of our team know what we think is his real name.

Mr Kim spent 30 years working his way to the top ranks of North Korea’s powerful spy agencies. The agencies were the “eyes, ears, and brains of the Supreme Leader”, he says.

He claims he kept their secrets, sent assassins to kill their critics, and even built an illegal drugs-lab to help raise “revolutionary” funds.

North Korea has recently introduced a sweeping new law which seeks to stamp out any kind of foreign influence – harshly punishing anyone caught with foreign films, clothing or even using slang. But why?

Yoon Mi-so says she was 11 when she first saw a man executed for being caught with a South Korean drama.

His entire neighbourhood was ordered to watch.

“If you didn’t, it would be classed as treason,” she told the BBC from her home in Seoul.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has banned skinny jeans and mullet hairstyles in his country, Metro has reported citing a report from South Korea-based Daily NK. Sputnik has been unable to verify the claim but according to the British newspaper, he was guided by a fear that foreign fashion influences on local youth may lead to North Korea’s collapse.

Piercings, dyed hair and T-shirts with slogans have also allegedly been banned.

Earlier, South Korean news agency, Yonhap, reported that a state-run North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun warned of the dangers of “capitalist” culture, which has caused socialism to collapse in several countries.

In the sleepy south-west London suburb of New Malden, the local Waitrose butts up against Seoul Plaza, a supermarket catering to the neighbourhood’s estimated 20,000 South Koreans.

The high street boasts every Korean business you could dream of: from the Kang Nam barbecue takeaway and Hanatour travel agent, to a fully-fledged hypermarket, with its own section for K-pop merchandise. (In BBC drama Killing Eve, Eve Polastri —played by Sandra Oh, who has Korean parents — quits MI6 to lie low making dim sum in the local Han karaoke restaurant.)

When Kim Jong-un’s brother was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur Airport, the two women who were arrested claimed they were just part of a prank.

It was, by any standards, an audacious plot. The assassination of the brother of Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February 2017, by two young women who walked up behind him and smeared what turned out to be the world’s deadliest nerve agent onto his face. It wasn’t until the following day, when his real identity was discovered, that his murder hit the headlines. When CCTV footage capturing part of the incident was later leaked to a Japanese TV station, it went viral.

(Link Fixed)