For timely and informed commentary on North Korea the North Korea Zone is the place to go. Due to the severe restrictions on foreign travel to North Korea there is almost no first-hand reportage. Ex CNN-journalist Rebecca MacKinnon established the North Korea Zone blog in Feb 2004 MacKinnon also operates a personal blog RConversation "a recovering TV reporter-turned-blogger".
The North Korea Zone is a group effort - there are six authors listed on the front page. In addition to the authors’ expertise, they harvest reports from contributors who are able to enter and exit NK. That is part of what makes NKzone a special resource.
Just to highlight one contributor, Andrei N. Lankov is Leningrad State Ph.D. (history) now at the Australian National University. Two of Dr. Lankov’s recent articles at NKzone.org are Foreign Missions in Pyongyang, and All Quiet on Eastern Front:
When I was reading the available Moscow archives of the Soviet Embassy in Pyongyang, it was quite evident there was a dramatic change some time after 1950.
Before 1950, the Soviet Embassy was the de-facto government of North Korea. This is now likely to be denied by the Korean nationalist left, which is very keen on presenting the North Korean developments of 1945-1950 as an indigenous revolution. But the available material leaves no reason for doubt: all the important political decisions of the North Korean authorities were approved or initiated by their Soviet supervisors (of course, this does not necessarily mean that these decisions were unpopular among common Koreans.)
This policy of the “communization of North Korea’’ was carried out by a remarkable group of ruthless, determined, efficient, charismatic people, of whom General Terentii Shtykov, the first Soviet Ambassador to Pyongyang, was pre-eminent.
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