Dermot Hudson

Dermot Hudson
Dermot Hudson in 2025
Chairman of the British Korean Friendship Association
Incumbent
Assumed office 2001 (2001)
Preceded by	Position created
Chairman of the British Group for the Study of the Juche Idea
Incumbent
Assumed office Sep 1985
Personal details
Born	20 July 1961 (1961-07-20) (age 65) Hammersmith, London, England
Party	Communist Party of Great Britain (1980–1987) New Communist Party of Britain (1990–1997; 2014–present) Socialist Labour Party (UK) (2001–2003)
Education	University of Winchester Korean Association of Social Scientists University of Greenwich
Occupation	Communist political activist

Dermot Caradoc Hudson (born 20 July 1961) is a British communist political activist with close relations with North Korea. He is the Chairman of the British Group for the Study of the Juche Idea, Chairman of United Kingdom Korean Friendship Association, and President of the British Association for the Study of Songun Politics. He is a former trade unionist and civil servant.

Hudson has written multiple works on North Korea, such as Behind the Mirror of Lies -The Truth About the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and The Famine That Never Was. Hudson's works on North Korea have been cited by various academic publications, such as US-Japan-North Korean security relations: Irrepressible Interests by Anthony DiFilippo (2012), Independence, Creativity, Mastery: Juche as Ideology and Theory in Education by Simon Boxley (2025), or The Dynamics of Indonesia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Diplomatic Relations by S. Bagus and Y. R. Isjchwansyah (2025).

Biography

Hudson was born in London in 1961 in Hammersmith, London. His family were Labour Party members and left-wing activists. Hudson became a communist in the 1980s, and took interest in North Korea after he had become disillusioned with increasingly liberalizing Soviet Union. Hudson studied in the University of Winchester and Greenwich, where he graduated in history. He was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1980s, but became increasingly disillusioned with it and began regarding it as revisionist.

As a student, he discovered Juche, and found its claim to be something more complete and updated than Marxism-Leninism. He initially worked as a civic servant who evaluated real estate prices. However, after he defended North Korea in a phone interview with Sunday Times, he was fired from his job. He also became a trade unionist. In 2001, Hudson became the chairman of the British branch in Korean Friendship Association, and received an official endorsement of North Korea for the position.

Between 1992 and 2014, he had visited North Korea nine times, and has since then become a regular visitor to Pyongyang. By 2020, he had visited North Korea eighteen times. In his publication Passcode to the Third Floor, Thae Yong-ho wrote that Hudson became a celebrity in North Korea, stating that "the North Korean media report on him nearly every week." When Hudson's mother died in 2015, the North Korean government offered him three thousand euros for the funeral; Hudson refused the money, arguing that they are better off "serving the Korean revolution".

However, Hudson was eventually persuaded by high-ranking Pyongyang officials to accept the donation. According to Thae, Pyongyang would afterwards implement a rule prohibiting North Korean officials from accepting donations from Hudson, stating that he "is living in very difficult economic circumstances"; Thae recalled that this regulation was strictly obeyed. In 2014, Hudson was described by North Korea as "anointed friend". Hudson wrote poetry in honor of DPRK, such as Echoes of Gun­shots from Po­chonbo, and has also become the edi­tor-in-chief of the Red Ban­ner of Songun publication.

He is an author of various DPRK-related publications together with other Korean Friendship Association officials, such as Alejandro Cao de Benos in Spain, and Francesco Alarico della Scala in Italy. Hudson's works have been translated into Czech and Serbian. In April 2016, Hudson received a doctorate in socio-political science from the Pyongyang-based Korean Association of Social Scientists [ko], after submitting a thesis titled In Defence of Songun. In 2017, North Korea awarded him with the Second Class Order of Friendship, an official state decoration.

Bibliography

• Behind the Mirror of Lies – The Truth About the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (2011)
• Peoples Korea Smashes Counterrevolution (2014). ISBN 1291689605, 978-1291689600.
• In Defence Of Songun (2017). ISBN 1326494635, 978-1326494636.
• In Defence of Juche Korea! (2018). ISBN 0244329699, 978-0244329693.
• Victory Of Juche Korea Is A Science (2018). ISBN 0244111545, 978-0244111540.
• Travels In The Land Of Juche Korea, 1992–2017: Personal recollections of visiting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea – travel notes and a bit of autobiographical stuff (2018). ISBN 0244433925, 978-0244433925.
• The Famine That Never Was – the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the ‘Arduous March‘ period: The myth of famine in the DPRK exposed (2020). ISBN 1716430887, 978-1716430886.
• The Great Conspiracy Against People's Korea (November 2021). ISBN 9781794808652.
• Anti-Revisionist Fortress of Juche- People's Korea and the Struggle against Revisionism (April 2025) ISBN 9781326520496.

See also

• Robert Egan
• Kim Myong-chol
• Francesco Alarico della Scala
• Alejandro Cao de Benós
• Robert Griffiths
• Andy Brooks

References