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This is a great follow up to our discussion in class about how closed off NK might or might not be. Can any country actually maintain a wall that is impermeable to information? This suggests not. Good find, Catherine! Quotes follow: "Conventional wisdom holds that the people of North Korea are trapped in a world of rigid conformity, totalitarian discipline and complete isolation from the rest of the world. But increasingly another picture is emerging: North Koreans are far more aware of the outside world, according to evidence provided by North Korean refugees, South Korean humanitarian aid workers, Chinese traders and others. "One of the most underrated realities about North Korea is its very dynamic relationship with China, and the amount of information that flows across that border. Students; business people; it's a continuous stream of traffic," he says. With that traffic come thousands of DVDs, CDs, cellular telephones, used computers and videotapes - many of them from China and South Korea."

"NPR journalists Mary Louise Kelly and Becky Sullivan and freelance photographer David Guttenfelder were among the some 150 foreign reporters who visited North Korea last month, at the invitation of the government, to cover celebrations commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Guttenfelder has taken nearly 40 reporting trips to the isolated country since 2000."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for a major political which he is expected to address his increasingly tense relations with Washington and Seoul over the expansion of his nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has ramped up missile testing to a record pace this year, exploiting a divide in the United Nations Security Council by Russia's war on Ukraine. But Kim has also been struggling to improve a dysfunctional and heavily sanctioned economy made worse by pandemic border closures in recent years, an issue he may also address during the meeting at the years end.

"improve a dysfunctional and heavily sanctioned economy. . . "? we know so little about what goes on inside North Korea, but it seems pretty functionally totalitarian. See this article from 2018: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/01/652037944/photos-inside-a-north-korea-that-is-changing-but-at-its-own-pace