The Uighurs are a Turkic people more closely related to Uzbeks and Kazakhs than to Chinese.

As a reader, I've always been interested in dystopian novels like 'Nineteen Eighty-four'.

In 1991, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.

In the 1990s, the United States offered to help North Korea with its energy needs if it gave up its nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world.

People have crossed the Himalayas in flip-flops seeking a blessing from the Dalai Lama.

Since 2009, 140 Tibetans have immolated themselves to protest Chinese policies that limit their freedom of movement, speech and religion, especially their right to venerate the Dalai Lama.

A South Korean teenager, 18-year-old male, is about five inches taller than his North Korean counterpart. And there are many soldiers who are only about 4'6". The height requirement is supposed to be 4'9". That's the size of my 12-year-old son.

North Korea's whole idea is to create a crisis to solve a crisis. They're so poor and they're so desperate that they realize that this bombastic rhetoric can drive the South Korean stock market down and get the U.S. in a tizzy. And it's a game they've been playing for many, many years.