Voice of Korea on 13760 kHz: North Korea's external service for Europe

What you hear

Nothing else on shortwave sounds like it. Each hour-long block opens with the interval signal, a few bars of the Song of General Kim Il Sung, then the announcer identifies the station in the hour's language and the programme begins. The news is almost entirely about the leadership's activities, the achievements of the economy and the statements of the Foreign Ministry, read in a solemn tone; the commentaries are often sharply worded; and between them comes music, orchestral and choral, with brass and massed voices, and features on Korean culture and history. The language changes every hour: English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese each have their slots, and the European-language hours fall in the afternoon and evening UTC. The audio is often rough, with hum, drift and distortion, and that too is part of the signature.

Who transmits and why

Voice of Korea is the foreign-language service of the DPRK's state radio, under this name since 2002 and before that as Radio Pyongyang. It exists to present the country's official view to the outside world and to Koreans abroad, and it does so with a consistency that has not changed in decades: the same programme formats, the same music and, remarkably, nearly the same frequencies year after year. For listeners that stability is a gift; the schedule you noted five years ago is probably still right.

The transmitters are at Kujang, in the hills north of Pyongyang, the DPRK's main shortwave site, and the catalogue's coordinates, 40.08° N, 126.1° E, point there. For Europe the station uses 13760 kHz and 15180 kHz in parallel, both aimed west across Asia, from a transmitter plant that is believed to be old and to run well below its nominal power on bad days, which explains the variable quality.

When and where to listen

13760 kHz is in the 22 metre band and 15180 kHz in the 19 metre band; both are daytime bands over the eight thousand kilometres from Korea to Europe. The European-language blocks in the afternoon and early evening UTC arrive while the path is partly sunlit, which is when they can be heard. In Europe the signal is usually weak but readable, better in the east than in the west, and better in spring and autumn than in midwinter, when the path goes dark too early; Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine and Russia are the best places for a receiver. Receivers in Japan, Korea and China hear the station at full strength at any hour, and a receiver in Japan is the easy way to hear the programme in decent quality. Receivers in the Russian Far East also do well.

The two frequencies behave differently: 15180 kHz is stronger in summer and in the early afternoon, 13760 kHz holds on later into the evening and does better in winter. Try both, and use a narrow filter when the signal is faint.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Shortwave broadcast → Voice of Korea. The program picks a public receiver that covers 13760 kHz, tunes it and sets AM; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed. If the signal is faint on a European receiver, a receiver in Japan or Korea, when the program offers one, gives the broadcast at local strength.