There is only one country in the world obligated to defend North Korea—the quintessential pariah state—in the event of an attack: Russia. The two countries have had a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement since 2024, making them extremely close allies. As proof of Pyongyang's gratitude for Moscow's friendship, an exhibition of North Korean art is being shown for the first time in the Russian capital, featuring more than 120 works of patriotic propaganda and social utopian ideals.

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (Goheung, 1971) is one of the most influential writers and illustrators in South Korean literature. Accustomed to working with reality, her graphic novels capture facts and testimonies from historical moments such as Grass (Reservoir Books, 2022), in which she collected the testimony of a Japanese army sex slave, and The wait (Reservoir Books, 2023), which narrated the plight of the more than 130,000 Koreans who were separated from their families during the war. Now, Gendry-Kim has focused on the current moment to send a message of peace between the two Koreas. The artist has just published My friend Kim Jong-un (Reservoir Books), translated by Yasmine Bonjoch Luna, a book that explores the figure of the dictator through interviews and meetings with people who knew him, or who were close to him. Taking advantage of his visit to Barcelona to present the novel, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim also participates in CCCB's Kosmopolis Festival with a talk this Thursday afternoon.

North Korea commemorated the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party this weekend with a massive parade in Pyongyang that combined domestic spectacle, ideological assertion, and geopolitical message. Leader Kim Jong-un presided over the event on Friday night, accompanied by foreign delegations., including Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang and Russian Vice President Dmitri Medvedev, in a setting that served to project the regime as a "useful ally" to Beijing and Moscow, and that reinforced its position amid tensions with Washington and Seoul, despite leaving the door ajar to an open Trump.

Sitting down to watch your favorite movie or sharing it with your loved ones can be a crime punishable by death in North Korea. This is one of the conclusions of a report published today by the UN Human Rights Office, which explains that the North Korean government is increasingly applying the death penalty against citizens accused of watching and sharing foreign audiovisual content.

When North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un stepped off his green train to Beijing on Tuesday to attend The Chinese government parade commemorating the victory over Japan, a crowd of high-ranking officials were waiting to shake his hand. It was the first time the international community had opened its doors to Kim and invited him to a multilateral meeting. But the real attention-getter was the young woman dressed in black waiting behind him, smiling politely: Kim Ju-ae, the daughter of the North Korean leader.