"Like tens of thousands of other North Koreans, I escaped my homeland and settled in South Korea, where we are considered citizens, as if a sealed border and nearly seventy years of conflict and tension never divided us. North and South Koreans have the same ethnic backgrounds, and we speak the same language—except in the North there are no words for things like "shopping malls," "liberty," or even "love," at least as the rest of the world knows it. The only true "love" we can express is worship for the Kims, a dynasty of dictators who have ruled North Korea for three generations. The regime blocks all outside information, all videos and movies, and jams radio signals. There is no World Wide Web and no Wikipedia. The only books are filled with propaganda telling us that we live in the greatest country in the world, even though at least half of North Koreans live in extreme poverty and many are chronically malnourished. My former country doesn't even call itself North Korea—it claims to be Chosun, the true Korea, a perfect socialist paradise where 25 million people live only to serve the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Many of us who escaped call ourselves "defectors" because by refusing to accept our fate and die for the Leader, we have deserted our duty. The regime calls us traitors. If I tried to return, I would be executed."

"Though North Korea is somewhat tolerant of Buddhism, it has very little tolerance for other major religions, including Christianity. In the past, Christianity had become so prevalent on the Korean Peninsula that was once called the “Jerusalem of the East.” But now, if a North Korean is caught with a copy of the Bible, it’s not uncommon for the entire family to be put into a prison camp."

"If I were to live my life again, I would want to live as an ordinary person. High-ranking officials already have one foot in hell. You don’t know when you will die. Living in peace is better. We were constantly bugged, monitored, and followed. What kind of freedom is that? What kind of life is that? …People think that North Korea’s high-ranking elites and Kim Jong Un share a common of destiny, but that’s not true."

"The great powers – the USA, the USSR and the People’s Republic of China – continued to exert an impact on communism around the world. Nowhere was this more obvious than in east Asia. North Korea survived as an independent state because Washington knew that Moscow and Beijing would intervene militarily if ever an American attack took place. Until the early 1970s Korean communism had an economy which performed as well as most Marxist-Leninist countries. Gross national product was roughly the same in the two halves of Korea, communist and capitalist, in the previous period. North Korea had an impressive export trade, especially in equipment for foreign armed forces. This was a highly militarised society. Conscription kept well over a million men under arms at any given time. Party leader Kim Il-sung was accorded almost divine status. Mass rallies of joyful citizens praising his achievements and expressing gratitude for his wise rule were frequent. The ‘Great Leader’, the party and the masses were said to be in unison. Yet North Korea suffered economic atrophy as the military share of the budget got fatter. (Meanwhile South Korea experienced a boom as its imports of advanced technology and finance from Japan and the USA paid off.) Civilians went hungry throughout the north; even rice began to fail to match the state’s requirements for consumption. Kim would not be deflected. He calculated that the best way of getting co-operation from neighbouring countries was to make his armed forces feared in the region. Research and development were initiated for the acquisition of independent nuclear weapons. Labour camps were expanded in population. Millions of Koreans, in the north as in the south, had been cut off from their families since the Panmunjom agreement of July 1953. The Koreans of the north might as well have been living on a different planet, so little did they know about the situation in the south."

"In their native countries, Roosevelt and Churchill are regarded as examples of wise statesmen. But we, during our jail conversations, were astonished by their constant shortsightedness and even stupidity. How could they, retreating gradually from 1941 to 1945, leave Eastern Europe without any guarantees of independence? How could they abandon the large territories of Saxony and Thuringia in return for such a ridiculous toy as the four-zoned Berlin that, moreover, was later to become their Achilles' heel? And what kind of military or political purpose did they see in giving away hundreds of thousands of armed Soviet citizens (who were unwilling to surrender, whatever the terms) for Stalin to have them killed? It is said that by doing this, that they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in the war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Manchuria to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Il Sung, to get half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Beneš and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fled from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had a better memory, recall for instance the episode of giving away the Cossacks?"

"Destruction was particularly acute in the North, which was subjected to years of American bombing, including with napalm. Roughly 25 percent of its prewar population was killed, Professor Cumings said, and many of the survivors lived underground by the war’s end. “North Korea was flattened,” he said. “The North Koreans see the American bombing as a Holocaust, and every child is taught about it.”"

"North Korea is a country ruled as a cult. At the center of this military cult is a deranged belief in the leader's destiny to rule as parent protector over a conquered Korean Peninsula and an enslaved Korean people."

"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea occupies the northern half of the Korean peninsula. With a population of about 23 million, it has half the population of South Korea. Currently, North Koreans are more isolated than the people of any other nation in the world. The North Korean regime holds a special place in the history of dictatorships in that it is the first Communist dictatorship to pass on leadership from a father to a son."

"Its system has been shaped by the need to distinguish itself, to seal itself off from the rival state, and to pursue nuclear armament."

"South Korea has developed into one of Asia's most affluent countries since partition in 1948. The Communist North has slipped into totalitarianism and poverty."

"Communism already meant very different situations in China, North Korea and South-East Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos). In particular, the authoritarian juche (self-reliance) of North Korea was similar to a Stalinism China had dispensed with when rejecting the brutal legacy of Mao from 1976. Although clearly malign, corrupt, economically inefficient, and consigning much of its population to semi-starvation, and some of it to murderous slave labour conditions in prison camps, this system was still in control of North Korea in 2015. The legacy of Confucianism in China was significant there for attitudes towards authority and for a lack of social rebelliousness."

"North Korea is the only country with which China has a legally binding mutual aid and co-operation treaty, signed in July 1961. There are only seven articles in the document. The second is the most important: "The contracting parties undertake jointly to adopt all measures to prevent aggression against either of the contracting parties by any state. "In the event of one of the contracting parties being subjected to the armed attack by any state or several states jointly and thus being involved in a state of war, the other contracting party shall immediately render military and other assistance by all means at its disposal.""

"Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens. Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom. Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens – leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections – then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic."

"Democratic Korea, its leaders and its people will always live in our feelings of revolutionaries, patriots and fighters for the triumph of socialism."

"Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association. The State shall guarantee the conditions for the free activities of democratic political parties and social organizations."

"The cruelest thing you can do is tell a North Korean that many Americans couldn’t locate North Korea on a map."

"Officially, North Korea was an extremely prosperous industrial state. It generated 95 per cent of its energy, and agricultural production was at an all time high. The country supported an enormous military establishment. If the figures could be believed, juche was working, but crisis was at hand. The collapse of the Soviet Union devastated North Korea which, despite juche, depended heavily on Soviet food, fuel, and weapons. To make matters worse, China established relations with South Korea in 1992, although it maintained a flow of aid to North Korea. The new economic situation brought a drastic fuel shortage. Factories were closed and the economy contracted at a dangerous rate. Kim turned to large scale production of missiles and development of nuclear technology, to raise funds and, implicitly, to pose a threat that the international community would have to ward off by a large payment. This produced a crisis with the US, finally defused by the visit of ex-President Jimmy Carter in June 1994. The Great Leader surprisingly agreed to stop development of the nuclear programme, and seemed about to embark on a new opening to the West, when he suddenly died on 8 July. After 49 years in power and 30 or more as an undisputed dictator, Kim died peacefully, his control of the country unshaken. His funeral was enormous and the mourning genuine, as North Korea faced a future without the only leader it had ever known."

"Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, and his tearing up the INF Treaty, has undermined efforts to convince N Korea to give up their nuke program, thus putting us all in grave danger"

"The US must always be willing to meet with our adversaries in pursuit of peace, but our history of regime change war and breaking agreements undermines our credibility. This is why Kim doesn't trust us.Yesterday’s failure to come to an agreement on NK’s nukes brings me no joy, but rather deep concern. But as I said yesterday on @Hardball, NK will not give up their nukes unless there is a complete re-appraisal of US regime-change “foreign policy.”"

"This isn't a case where the government has turned a blind eye to criminal activities or taking kickbacks from criminals. Experts say the regime itself sanctions and is involved in the criminal enterprises. "The best way to think about it is kind of like a Sopranos state, like a Mafia state or Mafia country," said Paul Rexton Kan, an associate professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "They sort of nationalized crime and they've industrialized it, and now they sort of weaponized it as well," he said. "It is sort of one whole state that is dedicated to organized criminal activities as a way to fund the regime, fund their programs.""

"In North Korea, every person is property and is owned by a small and mad family with hereditary power. Every minute of every day, as far as regimentation can assure the fact, is spent in absolute subjection and serfdom. The private life has been entirely abolished. One tries to avoid cliché, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il-sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint."

"The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea's food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader."