North Korea

North Korea fills the upper half of the Korean Peninsula, above the Demilitarised Zone. Paektu, a volcano with a crater lake on the frontier with China, is the highest peak on the peninsula, and the Yalu and the Tumen flow from its slopes to opposite coasts. The Kaema Plateau, called the roof of Korea, fills the cold interior, and the granite pinnacles of the Kumgang range rise near the east coast. Farms crowd onto the western plains along the Taedong.

Goguryeo, one of the early Korean kingdoms, moved its court to Pyongyang in 427, and painted tombs of its nobles survive nearby. Japanese rule, begun in 1910, ended in August 1945, when Soviet troops took the north and American troops the south, divided along the thirty-eighth parallel. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed in September 1948 under Kim Il Sung. The Korean War broke out in June 1950, and the fighting stopped with an armistice signed at Panmunjom in July 1953.

Chinese characters were dropped from everyday writing in 1949, leaving only the Korean alphabet. Cold buckwheat noodles in an icy broth, served as Pyongyang naengmyeon, are the dish most tied to the north. In 1966 the national football team beat Italy at Middlesbrough and reached the World Cup quarter-finals. The state-run economy rests on mines of anthracite, iron ore and magnesite, on steel and chemical works at Chongjin and Hamhung, and on cooperative farms that raise rice and maize.