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North Korea's "Jangmadang Generation," named after makeshift markets that sprung up of necessity during famine, may be the most transformational force the country has ever seen. Sokeel Park, from Liberty in North Korea, sketches out the market generation's characteristics and explains why its members are so different from their predecessors.

  It took Hyeonseo Lee ten years to reach South Korea after leaving the North, and she was separated from her family for 14 years. As she gets ready to launch her biography, she speaks with NKNews.org.    

Andrei Lankov says he's disappointed at the apparent halt of reforms that were expected to sweep through North Korea's economy. He deconstructs the speedbumps on NKNews.org.

Participants in a symbolic peace walk are breaking some new ground on using technology to send information from North Korea. It's called "Periscope," and it could turn into something big. Guest: Martyn Williams, North Korea Tech

NKNews.org and "Byline," a journalism crowdfunding startup, are teaming up in an effort to fund field reporting along the China-North Korea border. The idea is to go out and get those stories that slip through the cracks of mainstream media... which has to spend most of its time and resources on the 700 pound gorilla stories of geopolitics, and nuclear weapons, and high-level diplomacy. Want to get involved? Hear the founders of Byline and NKNews.org, Dan Tudor and Chad O'Carroll, in conversation on the latest NKNews podcast.

Author Paul Fischer has retold in a compelling new English volume the bizarre abduction tale of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee by North Korea. It's a gripping page-turner of capture and coercion -- but also an exploration of the power of film in establishing Korean narratives on both sides of the DMZ."A Kim Jong Il Production," on the latest NKNews podcast. Guest: Paul Fischer, Author, "A Kim Jong Il Production"

"North Korea Confidential" detours from the usual narrative of the DPRK primarily as rogue nuclear state or oppressor of human rights, instead focusing in on ordinary lives in an ever-shifting landscape of emerging capitalist-style market activity. Co-authors Daniel Tudor and James Pearson speak to NKNews.org. Guests: Daniel Tudor, @Danielrtudor, Former Seoul Correspondent, The Economist, and Author, Korea: The Impossible Country James Pearson, @pearswick Seoul Correspondent, Reuters North Korea Confidential:  Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors Byline:  Crowd-funded Journalism KoreaBANG  

Australian researcher Mark Fahey freely admits he's been a bit obsessed with North Korea since he was a teenager. At the height of the Cold War, he would listen to communist propaganda over global shortwave, and even corresponded with officials in Pyongyang and beyond. He's no communist sympathizer-- rather, he says he's passionately interested in how societies shape themselves with propaganda and other publicly disseminated information. Fahey went to North Korea four times between 2011 and 2013 -- often smuggling in multimedia gear he wasn't allowed to take along -- and "vacuumed up," in his words, a digital treasure horde of content. He's making much of it available, for free, in a forthcoming interactive ebook, "Behind The Curtain."  Listen to the latest edition of NKNews.org for a preview. Guest: Mark Fahey, Author & Producer, "Behind The Curtain"   Resources: "Behind The Curtain" homepage http://behindthecurtain.asia/   Mark's earlier work:  "Finding Firedrake," an attempt to map Chinese jamming capabilities http://www.satdirectory.com/firedrake.html  

In part two of his interview with NKNew.org on Chinese-style reforms in North Korea, Professor Andrei Lankov says Pyongyang still fails to grasp key concepts about attracting the massive foreign investment it needs to salvage the economy-- and the regime. Guest:  Andrei Lankov, Professor, Kookmin University, Seoul Resources: Lankov’s Al Jazeera article on North Korea’s market reforms

    Many North Korea watchers say Chinese style reforms, like the ones Deng Xiaoping put into place in 1970, are the only hope for North Korea to remain viable as a state.  Now, Russian scholar Andrei Lankov says that's exactly the path Kim Jong Eun has chosen.   Guest:  Andrei Lankov, Professor, Kookmin University, Seoul Resources: Lankov's Al Jazeera article on North Korea's market reforms

British Filmmaker Jake Smith has been in South Korea filming a documentary set to release in early 2015 entitled "While They Watched." The film is set in an unspecified future when North Korea has either profoundly changed or collapsed. It looks backward at the present day in order to make the case that the world is not doing enough to ease the suffering of North Korea's more than 20 million people. Guest: Jake Smith, Producer/Director, "While They Watched" Resources: "While They Watched" crowdfunding site The book that inspired Smith:  Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy

Author Suki Kim posed as a missionary to teach English at Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST). She formed close bonds of friendship with her students, but says she was constantly exhausted and anxious about sharing ideas or information that could put them -- or her -- in danger. She talks to NKNews.org about her newly published book, "Without You, There Is No Us."   Guest:  Author Suki Kim Resources: Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST)

Kim Jong Un is back, cane and all, after a public absence of a month and a half. But while much of the speculation has cooled, there's still plenty of reason to wonder "what if." Guest: Bruce Bennett, Senior Defense Analyst, RAND Corporation Resources: "Preparing for the Possibility of a North Korean Collapse," Bruce Bennett, RAND

  DVDs and USBs have done a lot to defuse the scary tales North Korea once told its people about the South, to keep them grateful they were living above the 38th parallel.  But as Professor Andrei Lankov explains, simple perceptiveness and the willingness to (silently) pose questions had a lot to do with it as well. Guest: Andrei Lankov, Professor, Kookmin University & Author: The Real North Korea

North Koreans have all but lost faith in their own currency, the (DPRK) Won. Instead, they are storing value in commodities or other "hard" currencies like the Dollar -- or, more frequently, the Chinese Yuan. Chris Green, of the web portal Daily NK, puts the eroding confidence in the North Korean notes into the context of government policies in recent years. Is it even possible anymore to resurrect the North Korean Won as a practical tool of trade? Guest:  Chris Green, Manager of International Affairs, Daily NK Resources: Read Chris Green's "Losing Face" article for NKNews.org on the DPRK 5000 Won swap here. Check out Chris Green's conversation about North Korea sanctions with researcher John Park here. Chris Green has been pointing out the Yuanization of North Korea's economy for some time now.  This article has some of his earlier observations.    

The Human Rights Foundation's "Disrupt North Korea" project just hosted the world's first DPRK-focused "hackathon," bringing together Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, programmers, journalists, and North Korean defectors to brainstorm new ways of getting information in and out of the country. Can a tech solution illuminate the darkness imposed by the regime? Guests: Thor Halvorssen, President, Human Rights Foundation Sarah Wasserman, Chief Operating Officer, Human Rights Foundation Yeonmi Park, North Korean Defector and Human Rights Activist Martyn Williams, North Korea Tech Chad O'Carroll, Founder, NKNews.org Resources: "Hack North Korea" video presentations on North Korea Tech's YouTube channel

The BBC's John Sweeney says it was worth it to pose as a London School of Economics professor in order to visit North Korea and share images from his trip with a mass audience. A year after that controversial trip, and the TV episode and book that spring from it, he sits down to talk to NKNews.org about what he labels "the dark state." Guest:  John Sweeney, BBC's Panorama, Author: North Korea Undercover Resources: Watch the BBC Panorama Episode on North Korea here. See Sweeney's first Panorama episode on Scientology here, and his follow up broadcast here.

    Some 2,000,000 legal cell phones are on the market in North Korea, and counting-- along with countless illegal phones, and cheaper knockoffs flowing in from China.  Technologists say all those devices could become a platform for direct, person-to-person information exchange known as "mesh networking." Sascha Meinrath, founder of the Open Technology Institute in Washington, D.C., is the developer of "Commotion," a free open-source mesh networking solution he says has been downloaded in every country in the world. A mesh can circumvent surveillance in politically repressive countries, but Meinrath says the main benefit is the simple day-to-day community empowerment that cheap, decentralized communication affords.  But can the government in Pyongyang afford to let mesh networking take root?   "Authoritarian regimes around the world are now facing a conundrum: do we allow digital technology into our country?...You either have to send yourself back to the Stone Age, or you have to understand that people are going to find ways to re-purpose computer technology to better suit their needs."   Guest:  Sascha Meinrath, Founder & Director, XLab and Open Technology Institute, Washington DC  

Katharina "Kathi" Zellweger resided in Pyongyang for five years, representing her native Switzerland as a country director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Prior to that, she spent decades coordinating international aid projects for North Korea, out of Hong Kong, for the Catholic charity group Caritas. These days, she's a visiting scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where she recently authored a report, called "People with Disabilities in a Changing North Korea." She says changing attitudes, and groups like the Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled, are improving the lives of the disabled-- as is interaction with the international community. Engagement is the only way forward if we are aiming at a peaceful solution in North Korea to the many problems there.  In recent years, North Korea started to establish what I would call semi-governmental organizations, and it's possible to collaborate with these... I think this is a change.  Not everything is all government anymore. -- Kathi Zellweger, Stanford University Guest:  Katharina Zellweger, Visiting Scholar, Stanford University Resources: Download the report:  People with Disabilities in a Changing North Korea Hear Kathi speak about the "five M's" on a Stanford panel.

Former Australian High Justice Michael Kirby spent a year hearing testimony from those who say they have suffered most from decades of human rights abuses in North Korea. Now Kirby says Pyongyang can no longer escape or divert attention from the consequences it must face for its action, including possible prosecutions at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity."North Korea has been brilliant in its international strategy. It's sailed under the radar,   it's had people like Dennis Rodman come, and people have a giggle and a laugh about it.  Well, this is not a giggling matter.  This is a very serious and very concentrated abuse of fundamental human rights -- crimes against humanity.  It's been going on for a long time, and now at least the international community knows about it.  And I expect things will happen." -- Michael Kirby, North Korea COI Chairman   Guest: Michael Kirby, Chairman, United Nations Commission of Inquiry on North Korean Human Rights   Resources: Download the summary of the North Korea COI Findings here. Download the detailed 372-page COI document here. Connect with the Commission of Inquiry on its official home page.