I have concluded that if tomorrow North Korea allowed foreign visitors safe passage - tens of thousands of curious Westerners would visit. It would be like an Orwellian Time Warp turned up to “eleven”.
People, don't believe everything you read, especially when it fits your biases ... ! (bbc) ... But so often these reports have turned out to be, dare I say it, fake news. The most (in)famous of these was the alleged death of singer Hyon Song-wol. In 2013, the same South Korean newspaper announced that she had been shot in a "hail of machine gun fire while members of her orchestra looked on". Last year, Hyon Song-wol swept into Seoul leading a visiting North Korean delegation ahead of the Winter Olympics looking rather glamorous in a fur coat and very much alive. She is now one of the most powerful women in North Korea. Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES Image captionHyon Song-wol (r) led a North Korean delegation at Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics South Korean intelligence officials said in 2016 that the former military chief Ri Yong-gil had been executed for corruption. He appeared in state media a few months later - having been given a promotion. Sources within North Korea can often be a reporter's most valued asset, but also one of our most troublesome. We have no way of checking their claims. Intelligence services in Seoul and in the US are trying to establish the fate of Kim Hyok-chol, but unless Pyongyang decides to announce it themselves, we may never know.