Joo, Yunha & Uhm, Chul Joo. (2020). Analysis of North Korea’s middle school English textbooks based on the 2013 revised curriculum. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 28(3), 39-54. The purpose of this explorative study was to find out the characteristics of reading passages in North Korea’s current middle school English textbooks. To this end, two analyzing criteria were postulated: structural organization and content. The overall findings are as follows: First, each unit was composed of various pair/ group work activities, which may help learners to build communicative competence. Second, four linguistic skills were integratively presented in the textbooks. Third, reading passages dealt with topics related to students’ daily and school lives, nature, science, and foreign culture. Interestingly, topics such as promoting communist ideology or idolizing Kim Jong-un had significantly less weight than previous textbooks. Fourth, there were statistically significant differences in the readability of textbooks by grade. Overall, North Korean English textbooks have improved in form and content. This shows that North Korea, which has only emphasized internal solidarity while being cut off from the outside world, is pursuing English education in line with the global trend.