The Korean Central News Agency is the official English-language press agency of North Korea. When tensions escalate between the two Koreas, it is to this agency that the world press corps turns for comment.
Since 1996, the KCNA's only overseas office, the Korea News Service in Tokyo, has operated a Web site, posting up to 10 stories daily from the KCNA. In a recent interview, the KNS's business director, Li Yang Su, made few excuses for the Realpolitik style of the KCNA news reports. A hardline, uncompromising stance is necessary, he said, if North Korea is to preserve its purity and simplicity and withstand the "soulless, empty homogenization of the world."
Li typifies those Koreans living in Japan who oppose what they view as the U.S. occupation of South Korea and consequently support North Korea, warts and all. His father was forcibly brought to Japan in 1928 during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), and Li himself was born here. He attended the pro-Pyongyang Korea University in western Tokyo, going on to teach Russian literature at his alma mater before taking up his present position with KNS.