Some notes by Tim.Beal
Website philosophy
This site on DPRK has grown considerably since its beginnings early in 1998. Then it mainly focussed on an appeal for famine victims. Since then it has enlarged greatly in scope and provides links, usually on a daily basis, to news articles and other resources over a wide range of subjects. The daily updating started in April 2000 with the announcement of the North-South summit, and has been continued, at some strain, since then.
I am conscious that some of the links will no longer work, and am grateful when problems are pointed out. However, I don't have the time or technical knowledge to do much more than that.
I try to capture a fairly balanced picture of what is going on but inevitably most of the material comes from South Korean or international media sources. I'm always glad of suitable material from unusual or less accessible sources.
There is no attempt to employ fancy layout or graphics and some of the pages are not even divided into date segments. There is a rudimentary categorisation system which works well enough although sometimes I give up trying to determine which category an article best fits into by putting into two. I wish I had more time to annotate the entries, or at least the more important ones; however in June 2002 I started to introduce the beginnings of a keyword system. A sample file giving details - keyword, higher and lower terms, examples, definition and see also terms - is available here. This is very much work in progress and comments and suggestions are welcome. The development of the system to a large degree hinges on my getting funding to hire some assitance.
Despite its limitations I do believe that the site provides a usual source of web-based, up-to-date information on the DPRK. I always welcome informed comment and suggestion but I haven't attempted to promote the website because I don't want to be inundated with emails. Nevertheless, the site has attracted some attention, and favourable comments from knowledgeable people.
The site was last reorganised 1 January 2005
Some assessments