One last night’s sleep in China before heading to Korea. Happy that the other group members seemed young and open minded, I felt safe to go and excited about a whole new experience....I had deliberately tried to avoid reading the news or books about North Korea so as to make myself a blank canvas with an open mind, ready to observe and soak up the experience without preconceptions or prejudice; insofar as possible to see it as it was, not through a filter.  

We just noticed that at least one brand of North Korean soju, the national alcohol and truly one thing that binds all Koreans together, now comes with a QR code.

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed HR 757, the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act. This legislation, long in the works but spurred on by Pyongyang's recent nuclear test, seeks to hark back to the moment of US pressure a decade ago.

Korean Central Television has confirmed that the "earthquake" that everybody was reporting on Wednesday morning was indeed its 4th nuclear test. What does this mean for North Korea's economic growth and business environment?

58 participants, the vast majority of them female, attended seven workshops on business development, project management, business performance evaluation, communication skills, and professional networking. Participants practiced newly learned concepts in competing teams and presented the results in front of the audience.

Check out this video: the conclusion of a collaborative effort between Choson Exchange, the UK's Architectural Association and the Korea-Singapore Friendship Society, to bring foreign architecture students together with Pyongyang students and professionals for a 10-day seminar, part of the AA's visiting school series.

It’s not yet dawn and I am jogging along the bank of the Taeddong River in central Pyongyang. Men on bicycles make their way slowly to work, military construction workers wash in the river, a group of brightly dressed ladies laugh while they play badminton, and patriotic music wafts from the street corner tannoy. As a lanky bearded foreigner in running shorts I get a few looks, but perhaps fewer than I had expected. My group is asleep back at the hotel, and I’m alone in North Korea.

Recently, we got a chance to visit Liangsui, a subdivision of Tumen city in Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture. Tumen has an agreement with Onsong, a town/country just across the river to develop a joint tourism zone.

Why isn't the Tumen region more integrated?

There are long-term forces at work, such as Moscow’s concerns over Chinese dominance in the sparsely populated Russian Far East. This legacy of mistrust frames cross-border interactions and despite recent warm relations, major cross-border cooperation remains limited. There are also relatively recent roadblocks to cooperation, such as Beijing’s opprobrium over North Korea’s nuclear program. This has prevented the implementation of pre-2013 plans to link Rason – North Korea’s northeastern special economic zone – to the electricity grid in Jilin Province, in Northeastern China.