Recently I personally read the content of the NKnews article about the state of the international solidarity movement with the DPRK. In it, analyst Gabriela Bernal makes some unfounded negative conclusions, we think it is appropriate to clarify the situation.

The fact is that the author of NKnews misinterpreted the dissolution of the Committee for Cultural Relations Abroad and on this basis makes further far-reaching forecasts. But the latest actions of the Korean government are not aimed at abandoning public diplomacy, but at increasing its effectiveness.

Especially for analysts who, hearing the bell but not knowing where it is, rush to make "sensational conclusions", I will explain responsibly:

Firstly, various organizations promoting the ideas of Juche, friendship, and solidarity with the DPRK have always been divided into different categories: different organizations have always been responsible for them depending on their role and purpose, be it the International Department of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Committee for Cultural Relations Abroad, the Korean Association of Social Scientists, etc.

The fact that Gabriela Bernal is writing an article about the DPRK's people's diplomacy, obviously not knowing about such a basic principle, raises questions about the level of her competence regarding the issue under discussion. The current structural changes that have occurred in the relevant organizations on the Korean side were made with the aim of eliminating disorder in the work of individual areas, systematizing and developing the work of people's diplomacy to a new, higher level in qualitative terms.

Secondly, instead of the Committee for Cultural Relations Abroad, the Korean Association for Cultural Exchange with Foreign Countries was almost immediately created, which has a similar purpose and level of authority. The key difference is that large organizations like our International Solidarity Group, which covers not only the area of ​​cultural exchange but also many other areas (work with bloggers and scientists, online broadcasting, business), now work directly with the DPRK Foreign Ministry through the relevant diplomatic missions.

Seeing the achievements of people's diplomacy over the past three years, which exceed the achievements of the past decade in significance, I wonder: what kind of "minimization of support from the regime" are NKnews analysts now chatting about?

I assume that NKnews relies on objective data on the declining state of some foreign organizations in its judgment. However, it is quite natural that the forces of international friendly organizations associated with Korea are scattered throughout the world, and there is a difference in the degree of their influence between them. It is also natural that some weak organizations are gradually reducing their activities due to geopolitical changes, while powerful organizations of friendship and solidarity are increasingly thriving in the current world situation.

It follows from the above that different organizations, depending on the level of their actual influence and purpose, must work at different levels in accordance with their contribution to the common cause.

In the case of our Group, under the leadership of Chairman A. Mostov and the Coordination Committee, we have made significant progress and strengthened our position more than ever before.

In 2024 alone, many significant events occurred:

The Russian Executive Committee of the DPRK ISG announced the establishment of a Friendship Club in many universities to promote the correct understanding of the DPRK among young people and sent a youth delegation to the DPRK; Darya Kadkina, Chairman of the Society for the Study of the Juche Idea in the Altai Republic, received a certificate from the Korean Association of Social Scientists for the Pyongyang International Seminar; at the initiative of the Chinese Executive Committee of the DPRK ISG, representatives of the Chinese and DPRK embassies, as well as activists from many universities, were invited to participate in the international conference “Global Diplomacy: Significant Dates in the History of the PRC and the DPRK” (this was the only conference of this kind in the last few years); Murodbek Yurdoshev, Ideological Leader of the Tajik Executive Committee of the DPRK ISG and the Chairman of the Communist Youth Union of the Republic of Tajikistan, presented to the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un with the royal dress "Zardozi"; the North American Executive Committee was created; branches were expanded in Germany, Hungary, Serbia, Armenia and the Russian Far East; and a number of documentaries were successfully released to counter the anti-communist and anti-Korean propaganda of some hostile forces, gathering hundreds of thousands of viewers from all over the world.

The above are already objective facts, sufficiently demonstrating the accelerated development of our organization. However, there was another event recently that I should mention.

The fact is that after the raiders seized the building of the Soviet Peace Fund, where our Russian Society for Friendship and Cultural Cooperation with the DPRK was also located, we lost not only a huge amount of documentation, but also the hall where the central meetings were held. And in December 2024, the senior officials thought with a heavy heart: will we really not be able to properly honor the memory of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il this time? Then the DPRK Embassy in the Russian Federation offered to hold the event on the territory of the diplomatic mission, showing us an unprecedented level of trust.

It follows that under the leadership of the headquarters, our Group not only maintains close cooperation with the DPRK, but also enjoys broad support at the national level in an increasing number of regions, further establishing strong multilateral cooperation among the national patriotic forces of various countries and the international communist movement.

It is obvious that NKnews' erroneous conclusions about the decline of the DPRK's people's diplomacy are based on erroneous data: this is not surprising, since the sources of this analytical agency rely on information provided by "moles" hiding in some marginal organizations. And since there are no so-called "moles" in the regional organizations of the DPRK ISG, we are not at all surprised that NKnews decided to ignore them in its analytical article.

It is unscientific and irrational to draw conclusions about the full picture using one-sided sources of information. And, of course, the current level of the analytical article published by NKnews is at an unfortunate low level. But I still have a glimmer of hope that NKnews, having managed to recognize and accept the changes in the international situation, will take an objective and rational position to understand the real situation of the DPRK people's diplomacy, and not rely on unreliable informants.

An important criterion of science is "verifiability", and if NKnews decides to adhere to a scientific, rather than a conservative-ideological approach, we will remain open to an objective and equal dialogue. If NKnews cannot get rid of its anachronistic ideological approach to the DPRK, then this analytical agency will inevitably find itself in an absurd position again and again.