Laura Ling

North Korea has upgraded the status of a free trade zone near its border with China and Russia as it looks to boost foreign investment, state media said Tuesday. The move is also seen by analysts as a further attempt by Pyongyang to reassert government control of the faltering economy, more than a month after North Korea drastically revalued its currency. Three weeks ago North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il reportedly visited the northeastern city of Rason, formerly Rajin-Sonbong, which became a... Read Full Story

North Korea has banned the use of foreign currency, another sign its hard-line communist government is intent on reasserting control over the country's nascent market economy. Reports say the decree warns of severe punishment for anyone using U.S. dollars, euros, yuan and other non-North Korean currencies. Foreign currencies previously were accepted in some shops, restaurants and other outlets, particularly those catering to foreigners. The order, issued by North Korea's state security... Read Full Story

About 60 activists staged a rally on Wednesday in a show of support for a US Christian missionary detained after he crossed into North Korea on a one-man human rights crusade. The activists who gathered in the South Korean capital called on the North's leader Kim Jong-Il to "repent" for his country's rights abuses and described the detainee, Robert Park, as a martyr. The North said Tuesday it had detained an American for illegal entry from China, its first apparent reference to Park. It said... Read Full Story

North Koreans visit a statue of the former leader Kim Il-Sung in Pyongyang on New Year’s Day. Photograph: EPA Inside The Hermit Kingdom — Salon.com A rare and fascinating glimpse of the lives of ordinary North Koreans. The image that opens the first chapter of Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” is a satellite photograph of North and South Korea by night. The southern nation is spangled with electric lights, including the vast, solid blotch of brightness... Read Full Story

North Korea said Tuesday it has detained an American for illegal entry, its first apparent reference to a Christian activist who crossed into the communist state on a lone rights crusade. "An American was detained after illegally entering the DPRK (North Korea) through the DPRK-China border on December 24," Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency said in a one-paragraph report. "He is now under investigation by a relevant organ." Robert Park, 28, was reported by colleagues to have crossed the... Read Full Story

North Korea said Tuesday it has detained an American for illegal entry, its first apparent reference to a Christian activist who crossed into the communist state on a lone rights crusade. "An American was detained after illegally entering the DPRK (North Korea) through the DPRK-China border on December 24," Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency said in a one-paragraph report. "He is now under investigation by a relevant organ." Robert Park, 28, was reported by colleagues to have crossed... Read Full Story

North Korea said Tuesday it has detained an American for illegal entry, its first apparent reference to a Christian activist who crossed into the communist state on a lone rights crusade. "An American was detained after illegally entering the DPRK (North Korea) through the DPRK-China border on December 24," Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency said in a one-paragraph report. "He is now under investigation by a relevant organ." Robert Park, 28, was reported by colleagues to have crossed the... Read Full Story

North Korean border guards apparently detained an American missionary as soon as he walked into the communist nation in an effort to call attention to Pyongyang's human rights abuses, an activist said Monday. Robert Park, 28, slipped across the frozen Tumen River into the North from China on Christmas Day carrying a letter calling on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to shut down the country's political prison camps. There has been no word from him since. Jo Sung-rae of the Seoul-based... Read Full Story

An American has been detained for illegal entry into North Korea, Pyongyang's state media said Tuesday, in an apparent reference to a Christian rights activist who crossed the border last week. "An American was detained after illegally entering the DPRK (North Korea) through the DPRK-China border on December 24," the Korean Central News Agency said in a one-paragraph report. "He is now under investigation by a relevant organ." Activist Robert Park was reported by colleagues to have crossed... Read Full Story

An American missionary believed to be detained when he stepped into North Korea on Christmas didn't inform his parents of his plans but they had a hunch he would visit the communist nation. "We had a sense," Pyong Park, the missionary's father, told The Associated Press late Sunday. "We told him to continue what you're doing in South Korea." About 100 people held candles Sunday night at Palomar Korean Church in San Marcos, a north San Diego suburb, to commend Park for going to North Korea... Read Full Story