North Korea

In the late 19th century, Korea came under the influence of Japan, which had become a significant regional power after winning the First Sino-Japanese War against Qing China and the Russo-Japanese War against the Russian Empire. Japan compelled Korea to become its protectorate in 1905 and formally annexed it in 1910. What followed was a period of forced assimilation, in which Korean language, culture, and history were suppressed. This led to the March First Movement protests in 1919 and the subsequent foundation of resistance groups in exile, primarily in China. Among the resistance groups was Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. During the Japanese colonial period, most Koreans were peasants engaged in subsistence farming. In the 1930s, Japan developed mines, hydro-electric dams, steel mills, and manufacturing plants in northern Korea and neighboring Manchuria. The Korean industrial working class expanded rapidly, and many Koreans went to work in Manchuria. As a result, 65% of Korea's heavy industry was located in the north, but, due to the rugged terrain, only 37% of its agriculture. A Korean guerrilla movement emerged in the mountainous interior and in Manchuria, harassing the Japanese imperial authorities. One of the most prominent guerrilla leaders was the Communist Kim Il Sung.

After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two occupation zones along the 38th parallel, with the northern half of the peninsula occupied by the Soviet Union and the southern half by the United States. Negotiations on reunification failed. Soviet general Terentii Shtykov recommended the establishment of the Soviet Civil Administration in August 1945, and supported Kim Il Sung as chairman of the Provisional People's Committee of North Korea, established in February 1946. In September 1946, South Korean citizens rose up against the Allied Military Government. In April 1948, an uprising of the Jeju islanders was violently crushed. The South declared its statehood in May 1948 and two months later the ardent anti-communist Syngman Rhee became its ruler. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established in the North on 9 September 1948. …

North Korea occupies the northern portion of the Korean Peninsula, lying between latitudes 37° and 43°N, and longitudes 124° and 131°E. It covers an area of 120,540 square kilometers (46,541 sq mi). To its west are the Yellow Sea and Korea Bay, and to its east lies Japan across the Sea of Japan.

Early European visitors to Korea remarked that the country resembled "a sea in a heavy gale" because of the many successive mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Some 80 percent of North Korea is composed of mountains and uplands, separated by deep and narrow valleys. All of the Korean Peninsula's mountains with elevations of 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) or more are located in North Korea. The highest point in North Korea is Paektu Mountain, a volcanic mountain with an elevation of 2,744 meters (9,003 ft) above sea level. Considered a sacred place by North Koreans, Mount Paektu holds significance in Korean culture and has been incorporated in the elaborate folklore and personality cult around the Kim family. For example, the song, "We Will Go To Mount Paektu" sings in praise of Kim Jong Un and describes a symbolic trek to the mountain. Other prominent ranges are the Hamgyong Range in the extreme northeast and the Rangrim Mountains, which are located in the north-central part of North Korea. Mount Kumgang in the Taebaek Range, which extends into South Korea, is famous for its scenic beauty.

The coastal plains are wide in the west and discontinuous in the east. A great majority of the population lives in the plains and lowlands. According to a United Nations Environmental Programme report in 2003, forest covers over 70 percent of the country, mostly on steep slopes. North Korea had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 8.02/10, ranking it 28th globally out of 172 countries. The longest river is the Amnok (Yalu) River which flows for 790 kilometers (491 mi). The country contains three terrestrial ecoregions: Central Korean deciduous forests, Changbai Mountains mixed forests, and Manchurian mixed forests.

North Korea experiences a humid continental climate within the Köppen climate classification scheme. Winters bring clear weather interspersed with snow storms as a result of northern and northwestern winds that blow from Siberia. …

North Korea is a highly centralized communist state that self-identifies as a socialist state. North Korea is unique among communist states due to the political dominance of the Kim family. The three supreme leaders of North Korea have all been members of the Kim family, and other members of the Kim family are prominent in North Korean political life as well; because of this North Korea's political system has been characterized as hereditary or dynastic. Kim Jong Un, the current supreme leader, heads all major governing structures: he is the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea, the head of state, and the commander-in-chief of the Korean People's Army.

The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the founding and sole ruling party of North Korea. While two other parties – the Korean Social Democratic Party and the Chondoist Chongu Party – exist, they are subordinate to the WPK. The leading role of the WPK over state and society is enshrined in the constitution by stating that "the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shall conduct all activities under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea." All state organs of North Korea operate under the leadership of the WPK; because of the party's organizational principle of democratic centralism, all party members in state organs are required to implement the decisions of the Central Committee of the WPK. All state organs consist of a majority of party members as well. The party also establishes party groups within state organs, which the WPK Central Committee supervises through its Organization and Guidance Department and other departments.

The highest organ of the WPK is the party congress, which meets at least every fifth year. It elects the General Secretary (the party leader) and the members and candidates of the WPK Central Committee. At its first session after a party congress, the WPK Central Committee elects its central leading organs: the Presidium, the Politburo, the Secretariat, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Central Auditing Commission (CAC). The general secretary leads the work of the Presidium, Politburo and the Secretariat, and concurrently serves as chairman of the CMC. …

North Korea has maintained one of the most closed and centralized economies in the world since the 1940s. For several decades, it followed the Soviet pattern of five-year plans with the ultimate goal of achieving self-sufficiency. Extensive Soviet and Chinese support allowed North Korea to rapidly recover from the Korean War and register very high growth rates. Systematic inefficiency began to arise around 1960, when the economy shifted from the extensive to the intensive development stage. The shortage of skilled labor, energy, arable land and transportation significantly impeded long-term growth and resulted in consistent failure to meet planning objectives. The major slowdown of the economy contrasted with South Korea, which surpassed the North in terms of absolute GDP and per capita income by the 1980s. North Korea declared the last seven-year plan unsuccessful in December 1993 and thereafter stopped announcing plans.

The loss of Eastern Bloc trading partners and a series of natural disasters throughout the 1990s caused severe hardships, including widespread famine. By 2000, the situation improved owing to a massive international food assistance effort, but the economy continues to suffer from food shortages, dilapidated infrastructure and a critically low energy supply. In an attempt to recover from the collapse, the government began structural reforms in 1998 that formally legalized private ownership of assets and decentralized control over production. A second round of reforms in 2002 led to an expansion of market activities, partial monetization, flexible prices and salaries, and the introduction of incentives and accountability techniques. Despite these changes, North Korea remains a command economy where the state owns almost all means of production and development priorities are defined by the government.

North Korea has the structural profile of a relatively industrialized country where nearly half of the gross domestic product is generated by industry and human development is at medium levels. Purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP is estimated at $40 billion, with a very low per capita value of $1,800. In 2024, gross national income per capita was $1,317, compared to $36,965 in South Korea. …

With the exception of a small Chinese community and a few ethnic Japanese, North Korea's 25,971,909 people are ethnically homogeneous. Demographic experts in the 20th century estimated that the population would grow to 25.5 million by 2000 and 28 million by 2010, but this increase never occurred due to the North Korean famine. The famine, which began in 1995 and lasted for three years, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 240,000 to 420,000 North Koreans.

International donors led by the United States initiated shipments of food through the World Food Programme in 1997 to combat the famine. The situation gradually improved: the number of malnourished children declined from 60% in 1998 to 28% in 2013. Domestic food production almost recovered to the recommended annual level of 5.37 million tons of cereal equivalent in 2013, but the World Food Programme reported a continuing lack of dietary diversity and access to fats and proteins. By the mid-2010s national levels of severe wasting, an indication of famine-like conditions, were lower than in other low-income countries and about on par with developing nations in the Pacific and East Asia. Children's health and nutrition is significantly better on a number of indicators than in many other Asian countries.

The famine had a significant impact on the population growth rate, which declined to 0.9% annually in 2002. It was 0.4% in 2024. Late marriages after military service, limited housing space and long hours of work or political studies further exhaust the population and reduce growth. The national birth rate is 13.2 births per year per 1,000 population. Two-thirds of households consist of extended families mostly living in two-room units. Marriage is virtually universal and divorce is extremely rare.

North Korea shares the Korean language with South Korea, although some dialectal differences exist within both Koreas. North Koreans refer to their Pyongan dialect as munhwaŏ ("cultured language") as opposed to the dialects of South Korea, especially the Seoul dialect or p'yojun'ŏ ("standard language"), which are viewed as decadent because of its use of loanwords from Chinese and European languages (particularly English). Words of Chinese, Manchu or Western origin have been eliminated from munhwa along with the usage of Chinese hanja characters. …