Lee Seok-young can still remember the first tune he heard crouched beneath the blankets late one night, twisting the dial of his radio until he caught a station across the border. Crackling through, at the lowest volume, was the South …

The United States should give a higher priority to advancing global religious freedom as a matter of national security, says a major new survey. The persecution of people of faith is inherently dangerous because it has the effect of …

Leaving aside Pyongyang’s current rhetorical bluster, there are four likely scenarios that might trigger a dramatic crisis on the Korean peninsula, writes North Korea expert Andrei Lankov:

The first is an attempt at reforms more or less similar to those …

The failure of young democracies in so many regions of the world has had enormous consequences, writes Joshua Kurlantzick. Most obviously, the renewed strength of authoritarian rule means that billions of people continue to live under repressive or pseudo-democratic …

Democratic backsliding in Eurasia, Egypt’s dependence on foreign subsidies, Kenya’s elections, Russian anti-corruption initiatives and the U.S. military’s efforts to help promote democracy feature in this week’s Democracy Lab roundup:

Anna Nemtsova sends a dispatch from Moscow on the …

With global attention focused on North Korea’s threat to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack, the UN Human Rights Council vote to establish a commission of inquiry into “crimes against humanity” in the repressive totalitarian state went largely unnoticed, say …

Dennis Rodman, the basketball Hall of Famer, told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, “You have a friend for life,” after an exhibition game in the Hermit State, according to organizers.

Rodman’s trip coincides with the …

“The United Nations’ human rights chief declared recently that the time had come for a ‘long overdue’ investigation into what she called unparalleled rights abuses in North Korea. The probe, unprecedented in scope, could help establish whether the North’s …

“North Korea may be the world’s most shrouded country, but on Tuesday Google Maps lifted the veil just a little, uploading a map of the police state complete with street names in the capital,” The New York Times reports…

The rising probability of a democratic transition in China may in turn facilitate change in North Korea and reunification of the Korean peninsula, says a prominent analyst.

Drawing on the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee research report on Chinese-North Korean …