There has been a lot of speculation around what China’s import ban on North Korean coal for 2017 means. Does this mean that China is finally coming around to the US position? If there is any doubt about that, the public disagreement in the US-China Munich meeting should dispel it

Readers in some countries may not be too familiar with QR codes, but in China they are ubiquitous. Now they're popping up in Pyongyang, too. Some people think they are ugly, but that is subjective. Let's not get into that for now.

We first visited the Yokjon a couple of years ago, and it has become a firm favourite with Choson Exchange workshop leaders.  Repeated trips to work with North Korean entrepreneurs in Pyongyang have meant visits to dozens of different eating establishments in the capital, and whilst the Korean food is fantastic, sometimes you just need a day having something other than kimchi.  The Yokjon satisfies that need admirably.

The Taesong Restaurant is located Southeast of the Polish embassy by about 500 meters and features a number of firsts in the Pyongyang dining scene. They serve beers in liter sized glasses. Oh sure, they have normal 500cc sized beers, also, but why wouldn't you get a whole liter? That's a lot of beer.

Working to support frontier entrepreneurs in North Korea is never easy. The country's bureaucracy is challenging to work with, its guardians paranoid and global understanding of North Koreans and their country prone to gross stereotyping. Fundraising for our work is never easy in the best of times, and is now much more complicated as inter-Korean and US-North Korea tensions reach new peaks. As we look towards a very uncertain funding situation, this Harvard Business School case profiling our work will help rethink our model and approach.

Indeed, it did bear some fruit: one elderly Chinese man from border town of Tumen recalled a couple years ago that he watched with great interest how in 1959 the Koreans sent teams up to Namyang, across the river, throw up a 5 storey building in just a couple weeks and leave. He'd never seen anything so incredible in his life - it made him want to move across the river!

A minty health-drink for stress relief. A kind of Facebook for North Korean mothers with parenting tips on the local intranet. A wondrous machine that, the inventors claim, will turn animal manure from farms into cheap electricity, charcoal, and gasoline. These are just a few of the business ideas pitched by teams of North Korean geeks to a group of entrepreneurs who recently travelled to the DPRK with Choson Exchange. 

The Wonsan Area Development Corporation has released its 2016 “Introduction to Investment Projects in Wonsan-Mt. Kumgang International Tourist Zone” booklet. Some of the people involved in the booklet have taking CE trainings, so we were most pleased to run into it in China.

Another nuclear test. What does it mean for Choson Exchange? The short answer is: "nothing good". Each test and subsequent round of sanctions makes the environment a little bit tougher for us. The main impact on CE is one of broad nervousness and fatigue.

Much is unknown about Manbang - we looked on the Chinese web to see if the characters for "Manbang" mean "10,000 directions" or "10,000 broadcasts", but Chinese news sites didn't know and were just using Roman letters. We also don't know if new apartment, leisure or entertainment buildings will be wired for the kind of data that is needed for streaming television.