What to read and watch

Sent to the Yodok prison camp at age 9 with his whole family. The book that put the camps on the map for many readers.

Left at 17, lived under false identities in China for a decade, then went back to the border to bring her family out.

Shin Dong-hyuk’s account of being born inside a political prison camp.

Note: Shin later revised parts of his story (2015). The core account matches other testimony.

Escape at 13 through China, trafficking, and the Gobi desert crossing to Mongolia.

Note: Some details have been questioned by journalists and other escapees.

A half-Japanese man whose family moved to North Korea in 1960 on a repatriation program and spent 36 years there.

From a Pyongyang childhood to living in a street gang during the famine.

A former poet laureate inside the regime’s propaganda apparatus. Rare view from the elite.

Six people from the city of Chongjin through the 1990s famine. The best single book on ordinary life.

Why the regime survives and how it might change. Lankov studied in Pyongyang in the 1980s.

Markets, smuggling, fashion, drugs and media. How people actually get by.

Biography of Kim Jong Un.

Argues the regime’s real ideology is race-based nationalism, not communism. Changes how you read the propaganda.

Undercover as a teacher to the sons of the elite at a Pyongyang university.

Short stories written by a writer still living inside North Korea, smuggled out. Fiction, but rare.

Policy view from a former White House North Korea adviser.

Follows a real escape through China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, filmed as it happens.

A state-approved documentary about a Pyongyang family, with the regime’s staging left in.

A Danish chef infiltrates a pro-regime friendship group and ends up in arms deals.

Kim Jong Il kidnapped a South Korean director and actress to make films for him.

A US soldier who defected to North Korea in 1962 and lived there for decades.

Found crimes against humanity "without any parallel in the contemporary world". Still the baseline.

Over 300 interviews. Found more surveillance, forced labor and executions since 2014.

Camp by camp, with satellite imagery and testimony.

Short annual summary of what changed.

Current estimate of North Korea’s warheads (about 60) and fissile material.

Searchable archive of KCNA, Rodong Sinmun and other state media, without visiting North Korean servers.

Scanned propaganda books, leader biographies and Juche texts in English.

Thousands of North Korean books and journals, with catalog records.

Data on North Korea’s trade, diplomacy and foreign ties.

Geospatial dataset of political, economic and security sites.

Detention facilities and cases from escapee testimony.

Searchable leaks and records, including sanctions-evasion company networks.

Curated list of maps, datasets and tools.

The data behind our missile test map.

Original open-source visualization our missile map is based on. Updated as new tests happen.