Beyond the 38th Parallel: The Cult of Kim
Ed Pulford, 13 August 2026
North Korea is an anomaly. Its GDP per capita is at least thirty times smaller than South Korea’s, but it is also an industrialised, predominantly urban society with near total literacy and many more doctors and teachers than the other states below 150th place in global wealth rankings. This seeming contradiction is the product of historical contingencies often at odds with the...

