I haven’t read NK News in a few years, but my sense is it’s a western-funded outlet. Basically aligned with US government interests, but tries to be more “academic” and less sensational than, say, Yeonmi Park on any given day. They ran an article once about how some of the more egregious errors in western reporting on the DPRK stem from gross mistranslations of Korean. That should tell you the stance they take: “north Korea is bad, but we need to be professional and avoid needless fearmongering, otherwise people might stop taking American policy re. the Korean peninsula seriously.”