Purpose: It aimed at assessing the current status of physics research in North Korea through a bibliographic and content analysis of the physics papers from North Korea indexed in the Scopus from 2005 to 2018. Methods: The Scopus was searched on January 18, 2019 by using the search option ‘Affiliation city’ with “Pyongyang OR Chongjin OR Hamhung OR Sariwon OR Wonsan OR Kimchaek” as the city name and 171 physics papers from North Korea written in English were identified. By performing supplementary searches based on the author names and the references, 46 papers belonging to physics were added and the total of 217 papers were identified. They were classified by publication year, co-authors’ country, institution, subfield, journal and author. Representative North Korean physicists and the active subfields of physics were identified. Results: The number of physics papers from North Korea has been growing rapidly in the recent years. Physics research activities in North Korea were extremely centralized in its capital, Pyongyang, where all major research institutions were located. Major research areas included condensed matter physics, optics and high energy physics and the large majority of papers were theoretical ones. From a bibliographic and content analysis, sixteen representative or notable physicists in North Korea were identified. Conclusion: It appears that the North Korean government is actively encouraging researchers to publish more papers in international journals. There is a strong growth potential in physics research in North Korea. In order to achieve balanced development in physics, it is an important task to build competitive experimental groups.

中文翻译：

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2005年至2018年被Scopus收录的朝鲜物理学论文的书目和内容分析

目的：旨在通过对 2005 年至 2018 年 Scopus 索引的朝鲜物理学论文的书目和内容分析，评估朝鲜物理学研究的现状。方法：Scopus 于 2019 年 1 月 18 日使用以“Pyongyang OR Chongjin OR Hamhung OR Sariwon OR Wonsan OR Kimchaek”为城市名称的搜索选项“附属城市”和171篇来自朝鲜的英文物理论文被确定。根据作者姓名和参考文献进行补充检索，增加了46篇物理学论文，共识别出217篇论文。它们按出版年份、共同作者的国家、机构、子领域、期刊和作者分类。确定了朝鲜的代表性物理学家和活跃的物理学子领域。结果：近年来，来自朝鲜的物理论文数量迅速增长。朝鲜的物理研究活动极其集中在其首都平壤，所有主要研究机构都设在那里。主要研究领域包括凝聚态物理、光学和高能物理，大部分论文为理论论文。通过书目和内容分析，确定了 16 位朝鲜有代表性或著名的物理学家。结论：看来朝鲜政府正在积极鼓励研究人员在国际期刊上发表更多论文。朝鲜的物理研究具有强大的增长潜力。为实现物理学的均衡发展，建设具有竞争力的实验小组是一项重要任务。