Ask a North Korean — A weekly NK News exclusive
Ask a North Korean is NK News's unique weekly column — questions submitted by readers, answered by North Koreans living in South Korea. Daily life, culture, family, work, defection, society. Perspectives that no government report or academic paper can replicate.
What this feature is
Format
Reader-submitted questions are reviewed by the NK News team and passed to North Korean contributors for a personal, first-hand response. One answer is published per week as a full article. Questions are submitted by email to [email protected].
What you can ask
Questions on daily life, culture, food, work, education, family relationships, leisure, defection experiences, perceptions of the outside world, and life in South Korea after leaving the North. Personal questions about lived experience — not requests for political commentary or strategic analysis.
Why it's unique
The North Korean contributors are not pundits or spokespeople — they are people who lived in North Korea and can speak to what life actually looks like from the inside. No wire service, no government body, no think tank publishes anything equivalent. The column has run for years and has built an archive of first-hand accounts that is unmatched in open-source English-language publishing on North Korea.
Sample topics from the archive
Submit a question
Email your question to [email protected]. Questions are reviewed by the NK News editorial team before being passed to contributors. NK News publishes one answer per week.
Guidelines
Focus on personal experience and daily life. Avoid politically leading or confrontational framing. The column works best when questions are specific and curious rather than broad and abstract.
Why this matters
For academics researching North Korean society, journalists covering humanitarian and social issues, or any professional who needs to understand North Korean lived experience rather than just government policy — Ask a North Korean is a primary source with no equivalent in English-language media.
The archive spans years of weekly answers, covering hundreds of distinct questions about life in the DPRK. As a research resource alone, it is worth the NK News subscription.
The complete archive plus new answers every week — included in all NK News plans.
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