North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s escalating threats against the US earned him a prominent spot in this week’s news cycle. Charles Armstrong, Director of Columbia University’s Center for Korean Research, tells Brooke that North Korean threats are not only cyclical - they’re seasonal.

In his first months in power, North Korea's new 20-something leader Kim Jong Un seems like he is on a mission to differentiate his regime from that of his father's before him, from speaking in public to stepping out with his fashionable young wife. Brooke speaks to reporter Blaine Harden, who says that the images coming out of North Korea show a friendlier, softer dictator, despite the fact that North Korea remains uniquely oppressive.

This week, news organizations selected by the North Korean government were permitted to report inside the country on the launch of a supposed weather satellite by the autocratic regime. The launch, which was more about military power than meteorology, was a spectacular failure. Bob speaks with B.R. Myers, who says that despite that failure, the mere presence of international media is useful to North Korean domestic propaganda.

The world’s media may have been invited for a rare peek into North Korea this week but one news organization was already there - the Associated Press.  After a year of negotiations the AP opened the first all format, full-time bureau in Pyongyang in January, the first western journalism outfit to ever do so.  Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press Kathleen Carroll talks to Bob about what it means to bring the AP’s journalistic standards to reporting in North Korea.

Smog - I'm New Here

This week we re-ran a 2010 interview between Bob and B.R. Myers about the near omnipotence of North Korea's propaganda machine. Citizens, according to Myers, had little access to international news under Kim Jong-il. Unsurprisingly, the tradition continues under his son -- but here's a case where government censorship appears pointless and reflexive.

After the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, we look back on a 2010 interview with academic B.R. Myers. Bob spoke with Myers, who describes how propaganda was a key tool Kim used to wield almost complete power in North Korea.