North Korea Briefing: Vol. 3, Winter 2025
This is the third edition of North Korea Briefing, a quarterly report analyzing North Korea’s internal dynamics.
This volume covers events and developments in North Korea during the fourth quarter of 2025 (October 1 to December 31) across five issue areas: politics, leadership, the economy, missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and foreign policy. Each issue area, or chapter, is scoped out as follows:
- Politics: Broader leadership trends, domestic political developments, and shifts in rhetoric on key ideological or domestic policy issues
- Leadership: Roles and functions of Party, government, and military institutions, power dynamics within the leadership, and personnel changes
- Economy: Domestic economic indicators, economic policy, and external economic relations
- Missiles and WMD: Missile, nuclear and other WMD-related activities, key technological advancements, and related policy
- Foreign policy: Positions on key international and foreign policy issues and foreign relations
All chapters use North Korean state media as their primary source, aided by secondary sources such as reporting from third-country media outlets and think tank analyses.
CHAPTER BREAKDOWN
Chapter 1. North Korea Touts Kim’s Decade of Leadership, Charts Course for Ninth Party Congress, by Gyeong Seob Oh
Chapter 2. Waiting for the Party Congress?, by Michael Madden
Chapter 3. North Korea Steps up Reporting on People’s Livelihoods, Hints Party Congress To Provide More Detailed Economic Plan, by Mitsuhiro Mimura
Chapter 4. New Missiles but Fewer Launches, a Missile Sub Reveal, and a Nuclear-Armed Air Force, by Vann H. Van Diepen
Chapter 5. North Korea Resumes Criticism of the US While Moderating Rhetoric, Accelerates Exchanges With China, by Kibum Han
Download the full report: North Korea Briefing: October – December 2025