Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) members attending the opening of the Ninth Congress of the WPK in Pyongyang, North Korea, 19 February 2026. Photo by KCNA / EPA
June 28 (Asia Today) -- North Korea has largely succeeded in stopping foreign news and cultural content from circulating among its population through tighter border controls and increasingly severe punishment, a veteran Japanese journalist said.
Jiro Ishimaru, head of the Osaka office of Asia Press, has worked with North Korean citizen journalists for more than two decades to report on conditions inside the country.
"The border remains so tightly sealed that residents are not even allowed to touch the waters of the Tumen or Yalu rivers," Ishimaru said in a recent interview with Asia Today in Seoul.
"China has also strengthened controls on its side of the border, meaning that the flow of outside information into North Korea has effectively stopped," he said.
