User:Ceosad/sandbox/North Korean sources guide

{Guidance essay}}

The obvious issue with the North Korean sources is that many of their facts can not be checked with independent sources. However, not all of them can be considered tainted and simply discarded. Many sources are readily usable on Wikipedia like, for instance, the KCNA news and published materials on topics such as Pyongyang Metro. North Korean websites provide information about culture, propaganda and recent political developments, which have utility on various cases.

Contemporary media has strengthened viewpoints that everything inside North Korea is tainted and everything from outside is true. Aggressive tabloid journalism causes various troubles which should not be forgotten simply due to North Korean oppressiveness.

This essay will not provide insight on what exact North Korean (primary or secondary) sources can be considered to be complying with reliability and notability guidelines, as that is a different question. Seemingly reliable sources contain false information too. The case of Rhine's length when false information was spread for decades might be comparable to books about North Korean film industry. Only methods of efficient use and pruning bad sources are inside the scope of this essay.

Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
You should use the old KCNA.co.jp domain instead of the new KCNA.kp domain. Their various multimedia and website coding solutions used are very out-of-touch with mainstream web designing. The new domain is essentially uncitable due to the widespread use of JavaScript on the website. Be careful while touching their multimedia players or other stuff. They used to have a unique file format and a standalone media player for some files at least on the Voice of Korea's website, but these seem to have thankfully become obsolete. However, the KCNA's Japanese servers are inaccessible outside Japan. Google still crawls them through their servers, so you can access their archived version.

STALIN search engine can be used to search old KCNA archives together with Google caching.

You can always use KCNA Watch if you are lazy, but it is not a possibility for most of the time, unless you are seeking relatively fresh news.

Link rot and dead link preservation
Nothing is eternal, except for the Japanese servers of the KCNA. Link rot is a serious threat and eventual fate for any nice and pretty picture book you managed to dig up from the Naenara web portal. North Korean style link rot is horrid. The homepages of organizations may move very quickly or disappear completely. The North Koreans occasionally like to purge and cycle any old content from their servers to keep their propaganda fresh. The contents tend to appear again in few months - or years. Use common sense whether or not the materials can be found next month. However, a link that will break is still a better choice than a working link to a copyright violation.

So you found a broken link from an article? Do not use template, if the North Korean website link does not work one day! At least check the link again after a day or two. The North Korean servers are notoriously unpredictable on their up-time and downtime. You will be seeing some trouble when trying to change language from Korean to English, and a short downtime will make it reset back to the Korean. The whole internet infrastructure is built on decades old equipment and it has a total bandwidth that can be counted in gigabytes. There is no template in Wikipedia.

Please provide an archived version even if the page is still accessible! Accessing the archived version is always faster than trying to get it from the North Korean servers. You will be saving a lot of time from other editors. Assuming that you can get a link that works due to the awful way North Korean websites are coded.

Book sources
Remember, North Korea has adopted ISBNs for their books only very recently. You must use OCLC codes instead most of the time. You may use WorldCat or a similar service to track down any elusive books you need. Internet book catalogues are also useful when you need to obtain people's or books' names in korean script.

If you are writing an article about first half of the history of North Korea, keep in mind that the books have been reprinted, and might have been tempered with. This concerns mainly very old books that contain speeches or are about people who have been purged. There is no guarantee that the newest version has not been tempered, since there were quite a few major purges before the 1970s. You could use the first print if it is available. However, this is not a major issue on Wikipedia, but this causes problems for North Korean studies and might make even some of the secondary and tertiary sources unreliable. The most infamous case of this is the whole Kim Il-sung Juche-speech nonsense that resembles a game of Chinese whispers, which is about the "fact" that the Great Leader invented Juche while visiting Indonesia. Consider everything pre-1980s to be retconned twice. Independent news media and publishing houses were banned in the late 1960s by Kim Jong-il's (sic) orders.

Obtaining book sources does not necessarily mean that you need to pay for them if your nearest university library does not have all the volumes of Reminiscences: With the Century. Many of the North Korean books are available in PDF format from various North Korean websites for free and translated to various languages. Sometimes they do not provide you with the exact book you might be searching, and you will need to buy it. North Korea Books is the largest book shop outside of North Korea. Chongryon's bookstore in Japan no longer exists due to low sales. Official North Korean sales catalogue can be obtained from - -

Obtaining secondary sources
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Academicians
Speaking Korean is not seen as essential for one to be considered a North Korean studies scholar, or a member of a thinktank. The vast majority of country studies people for any other country that exist can be expected to know the local language. The North Korea is an exception for this rule. North Korea is very small, it has economy of Ethiopia, size of Mississippi, population of Australia and only slightly more nukes than South Africa ever had. As a result, the group of dedicated North Korean studies experts is limited in size. In addition, the South Korean scholars who do speak Korean never bother to check how North Koreans or anybody else translate the relevant terms to English language. Be prepared to see half a dozen terms which might or might not mean the same thing.

Furthermore, do not trust people who are experts on movies. (See below about books.)

Defectors
North Korean defectors lie too. Many have been proven to be lying, and some have confessed lying themselves. Avoid claims that can be traced back to only one or two defectors. Prominent examples include Kwon Hyuk who managed to influence the United States Congress in 2004, Shin Dong-hyuk of Camp 14 and Lee Soon-ok who was busted by fellow defectors.

The defectors are not representative of whole North Korean society. This may cause various types of biases. People who flee North Korea are predominantly women, are more religious than average North Korean, belong to lower class, are badly educated and usually lived in the Northern provinces. Many of the defectors are also very militant activists and opposed to North Korean regime, and as such are not just adopting a refugee's viewpoint. Fighters for a Free North Korea is among the largest defector activist groups.

Books
Ignore any exotic non-film claims about the leaders made in the books about North Korean movies. These are notoriously bad in getting their facts straight. Furthermore, careless academicians writing books might be affected by North Korean retconning of history. Avoid books by defectors who have confessed lying.

Books by layman visitors to the North Korea can be readily replaced by better sources and are completely unreliable, and they can be expected to repeat old showcase mantras. Keep in mind that despite all of the hardships suffered, the North Korean economy has seen modest growth at least since later half of Kim Jong-il's reign. Not all fruits are made of plastic these days, so you should not do any cherrypicking. (Read WP:CHERRYPICKING for more guidance on this.) Old accounts by visitors get obsolete eventually.

Media
Hong Kongese or other East Asian tabloid media throws around once in a while a rumor about North Korean brutal executions or about something else while trying to make it sound as outlandish as they can. One such instance was the claim that Jang Sung-taek was fed to the starved dogs, and no, the Wangjaesan Light Music Band members were not executed for working with Kim Jong-un's ex-girlfriend. Kim Jong-un hairstyle was sadly never mandatory for university students. Some of the rumors have been fueled by the South Korean intelligence. Use common sense with North Korea scandals. North Korean internet budget was most likely more than 15 dollars.

Avoid using "Japanese intelligence sources", "an unnamed North Korea expert", Japanese media and Kenji Fujimoto at the same time as sources. There is a change of using him twice resulting in circular reporting. He lives by giving interviews about his life in North Korea, and he is very busy doing it.

Short list of prominent scholars
Depending on what you are trying to do, these people might be a good starting point for your research on article writing or expansion. There are several others too, but these are among the most iconic North Korea experts. People listed below have specialized on certain viewpoints and an area of study.


 * Alzo David-West, a literacy and aesthetics expert on North Korea
 * Andrei Lankov, a Russian scholar who studied in the Kim Il-sung University in the 1980s
 * Barbara Demick, an American journalist who has focused on economic and social changes
 * Brian Reynolds Myers, a specialist on North Korean propaganda who often criticizes his fellow academicians, and he notably believes that North Korea is a statist far-right state
 * Charles K. Armstrong, a typical run-of-the-mill Korean studies professor who writes books about North Korean history etc.
 * Hwang Jang-yop was the highest ranking defector who influenced development of Juche and never renounced it
 * Sung-Yoon Lee, a South Korean expert on North Korea who supports hard line towards the regime and engagement with the people
 * Victor Cha, an American foreign policy expert

Common claims to not add in articles

 * Double rainbows that appeared on Kim Jong-il's birth are about as likely as the "fact" that Carthage's fertile lands were salted.


 * This page that is run by the Korean Friendship Association is not the official website of North Korea despite whatever they claim. They offers some cash-grab holidays. Go enjoy Naenara instead, or get a professional tour for cheaper.


 * Pyongyang Metro is fake because tourists are allowed to ride only between Puhung Station and Yonggwang Station. Everyone else on the metro station is either an actor or a regime agent.

Search engines

 * NK News STALIN search engine
 * Korea Film Corporation provides a search engine for various films, and see also a (unreliable!) list of films provided by NorthKoreanFilms.com
 * North Korea Maritime Administration has had a searchable database of North Korea’s ships on its website since 2015, but the site might be down . They used this domain back in 2011.
 * OCLC WorldCat.org (See WorldCat at Wikipedia)

KCNA domains

 * The old KCNA domain
 * The new KCNA domain

Other North Korean websites
See also this list at North Korea Tech
 * Naenara
 * Uriminzokkiri
 * Voice of Korea

Book sources

 * Korean Friendship Association offers a somewhat unremarkable e-library, but some of the translation offered are older versions than what other sources offer
 * Naenara's free e-books
 * North Korea Books

Online newspapers

 * Daily NK has insider sources from North Korea, but it might have biases (article)
 * NK News has some paywalls, but offers professional analysis (article)


 * Foreign Trade (article) - Warning! The PDFs might occasionally get removed from the servers. Save a copy if you are planning to use them!
 * Korea Today (article) - Warning! The PDFs might occasionally get removed from the servers. Save a copy if you are planning to use them!
 * Korea (aka Korea Pictorial) - Warning! The PDFs might occasionally get removed from the servers. Save a copy if you are planning to use them!
 * Rodong Sinmun offers a lot of fresh propaganda to digest when KCNA is not enough! (article)
 * The Pyongyang Times (article)

Websites monitoring North Korea

 * 38 North
 * KCNA Watch
 * North Korea Economy Watch
 * North Korea Leadership Watch
 * North Korea Tech
 * Sino-NK