Cleaning the House Before Inviting Guests In: SinoNK.com Events and Developments in April and Beyond
Editors on the Move // On Friday, April 27, SinoNK.com’s chief editor, Adam Cathcart, will be speaking at Leiden University:
Managing Editor Charles Kraus presented research from the same co-authored project at Johns Hopkins University SAIS on April 6, 2012.
Assistant Editor Steven Denney will be attending the 2012 Asan Plenum from April 25-27 at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul, Korea as a Young Scholar Participant. The Plenum brings together a diverse group of scholars, many of whom have written extensively on North Korea and the Northeast Asian region, such as David Sanger (NYT), Victor Cha (CSIS) and Mark Fitzpatrick (IISS), among others. Besides other things that graduate students take care of at high-profile conferences, Denney is responsible for reporting on the points made and debates entertained at the panel “American Foreign Policy towards the Korean Peninsula” with Bruce Klingner (Heritage), Scott Snyder (CFR) and Christopher Hill (University of Denver), in addition to meandering through the Hotel and networking with those who have interests that dovetail with his own. Look for a panel follow-up on the “Snyder Paradigm” and analysis on what these fellows are reporting from the panels here at SinoNK.
Notes on Personnel and Future Openings | In other staff news, Analyst Nicholas Levi published an interesting piece on North Korean elite family politics in the Daily NK, Public Security Analyst Megha Rajagopalan won a position at ProPublica in New York City, and Chinese Geostrategy Analyst Nick Miller won a summer internship with the Korean Economic Institute.
We anticipate having new staff openings and will be opening up a call for applications from approximately May 15-June 7. An announcement will be posted on SinoNK.com in several weeks.
If more visualization is needed, Tripline provides an entertaining way to picture a.) where SinoNK’s current analysts are located, and b.) where the Chief Editor has been traveling of late to pick up materials, meet with scholarly types, and burnish up perspectives.
A Note on Musical Performance | Finally, a note on musical performance, an activity which clearly lies at the core of the DPRK experience: Chief editor Adam Cathcart performed North Korean music in Berlin on April 22, 2012, with pianist Andreas Boelcke and the Amitayus Duo. The performance was attended by NoKo Jeans CEO Tor Rauden Källstigen, himself a spinner of techno music from Stockholm who has not only relocated to the German capital, but provided us with a final song track from the Amitayus concert there. You can listen to it on Tor’s amazing Soundcloud page.
This summer, Cathcart and Boelcke will be recording and producing a disc of their arrangements of North Korean songs for distribution via an as-yet unknown label. They have hopes to ultimately bring Shostakovich to Pyongyang, but might have to be content with propaganda songs, music Chinese composers, and Isang Yun.
The Amitayus Duo performs a savage and light Shostakovich Scherzo, op. 40 (1934, just before all the purges) | Video courtesy Yuntian Cultural Entreprises and Sichuan Conservatory of Music, PRC
