Archive for December, 2011:

Igniting Daily NK Inroads

By | December 20, 2011

Amid the Kim Jong Il news, a column of mine on a strange traffic accident last month which portended ill for the Sino-North Korean relationship was published on the morning of December 19 on the Daily NK.

Via China, a Capitalist Restoration in the DPRK? A Marxist Perspective

By | December 20, 2011

Excerpting an entire chunk below of John Peterson’s work, which itself quotes at length a certain Minnesota reporter, in a worthy essay on Marxist.com: [begin quote] Capitalist Restoration? Capitalism has succeeded in prying open nearly the entire world. In an epoch of economic crisis and dog-eat-dog competition, every possible inch of market real estate will […]

Kim Jong Il Supine, the Opining Commences: Two Doomsday Op-Eds

By | December 20, 2011

Given that, according to Chinese reporters, the mad dash to build apartments in Pyongyang in time for 2012 has hardly slackened on account of Kim Jong Il’s death, the immense Huichon Dam in North Korea might also still be under construction today. But to many commentators outside of East Asia, the dam has already broken: […]

“Protecting North Korea’s Freedom of Choice”: Huanqiu Shibao Lead Editorial

By | December 20, 2011

Here is the full text of today’s (December 20) Huanqiu Shibao editorial about China’s outlook on the Kim Jong Il aftermath in North Korea.  Underlined text below does not appear in the Global Times’ English language version of the piece.    中国是朝鲜平稳过渡的可靠后盾 / China is North Korea’s Reliable Support for Smooth Transition 朝鲜最高领导人金正日突然去世,中国迅速表示哀悼。这是东北亚的重要事件,无论朝鲜如何度过权力交替期,一些国家都会把这当成改变地区战略格局的契机,朝鲜的稳定和地区战略稳定都面临考验。中国此时的态度很重要。中国须坚决、明确地维护朝鲜的独立自主,保障朝鲜的权力过渡不受外部的干扰,保障朝鲜选择国家道路的自由。North Korea’s highest leader Kim […]

Surveying the Post-Kim Jong Il Landscape from Beijing: Sources

By | December 19, 2011

About an hour ago at noon Pyongyang time, Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong Il had died yesterday morning in his train “from overwork.” A Chinese reporter, Zhao Shuguang [赵曙光], who described in earlier reports the North Korea leader’s desire to make it to age 70 in the year 2012, and who has also been […]