Rodong Sinmun

“Nightmare Investment”: Documenting North Korea’s Abuse of the Haicheng Xiyang Group

By | August 15, 2012

Adam Cathcart documents and analyzes accusations of wholesale North Korean theft from and violence toward their Chinese counterparts in the mining industry.

Romney’s Dog, Campaign Finance, and Guns: American Culture through the Rodong Sinmun Lens

By | June 11, 2012

Romney’s Dog, Campaign Finance, and the NBA Playoffs: American Culture through the Rodong Sinmun Lens by Adam Cathcart As anyone with even a passing interest in the DPRK can attest, of the themes which variously thunder, thrum, or skip intermittently through the North Korean media, criticism of the United States is a constant.  The recent […]

In My Father’s House There Are Many Bunkers: Assessing the Kim Jong Un Speech

By | May 13, 2012

Kim Jong Un’s pre-centennial speech to the WPK, admonishing the functionaries to hold his grandfather and father — now the eternal General Secretary of the WPK — in high esteem, occurred in what are anything but thriving times.  In North Korea, such behavior is the continuation of an old tradition.[1]  The April 15 speech, analyzed […]

NSA on the Edge: Gen. Kim Won Hong and the National Security Agency’s Rise to Prominence on the Frontier

By | April 24, 2012

Anyone who has wandered around the city of Berlin in a long twilight or early morning could tell you that borders have meaning, and that severe dangers accrue to those who have, under the wrong circumstances, attempted to breach them. The Sino-Korean frontier is not the site of an iconic wall, nor is it precisely […]

Open Questions in the Aftermath of April 15

By | April 17, 2012

Open Questions in the Aftermath of April 15 by Adam Cathcart Unlike the DPRK economy, news about North Korea is moving faster than a horse with wings, and it’s easy to feel that the arc of events has overtaken one’s ability to trace everything that is occurring. Consider this series of facts: In the space […]