Carnegie Politika podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, to discuss the outcome of Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent visit to North Korea.

Embroiled in a confrontation with the West, Russia cannot play the role of an effective intermediary, and Moscow’s unwillingness to subsidize North Korea means that for Pyongyang, Russia is of no interest as a potential donor.

North Korea’s statements of its intention to abandon nuclear weapons should not be taken too seriously: the country considers them to be the most important guarantee of the regime’s preservation. For now, North Korean nuclear weapons play a primarily defensive role, but it cannot be ruled out that in the future the nuclear program will also be used for offensive purposes. In addition, their existence increases the risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in East Asia.

The U.S. State Department’s effort to portray North Korean migrant labor in Russia as slavery is misguided; working abroad is one of the only ways for North Koreans to climb the social ladder and provide their families with a modicum of financial stability.

In his first trip to Asia, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has had to contend with North Korea's recent provocations and heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Carnegie.ru asked three experts, one in South Korea, one in Russia, and one in the United States, to comment on the question: "Can North Korea be contained?"

North Korea has been described as the world’s last Stalinist country. The rhetoric of its officials may indeed be Stalinist, but market forces have played a major role in its economy since at least the late 1990s. The spontaneous growth of free enterprise has been crucial to the North Korean economy’s slow but steady recovery from an external shock.

This year media publications, state visits, and lofty declarations implied an unprecedented boom in Russian-North Korean relations. However, official 2014 statistics paint a different picture

In recent years, North Korea has transformed from one of the least to one of the most corrupt countries in East Asia. But this has been a blessing for its people, both politically and economically

Under Kim Jong-un, the repressions against the North Korean elite have reached unprecedented levels since the times of the inter-faction strife of the 1950’s. Such methods of shoring up one’s power may backfire