Editor’s Note

By | July 13, 2012 | No Comments

Summer arrives in earnest at Sino-NK with several new additions to our team of analysts, including recent contributors Darcie Draudt in Seoul, Erin Hoshibata in Hawai’i and Nick Miller in Washington, D.C. With a revitalized and global Staff, we have a strong lineup of essays planned for the summer, along with our customary level (other adjectives can be applied by the reader) of relatively quick-on-our-feet analysis to current and unforeseen events.

We are also undertaking ongoing tweaks and changes to the website itself. Readers new and old are welcomed to leave comments on this page as regards the new (and evolving) site layout.

This post is intended to give readers a handful of updates as regards the activities of our editorial staff, mostly by way of pointing to their publications in other venues, with the understanding that in the Sisyphean task of trying to keep up with pace-setting and multiple-tool-wielding analysts like Stephan Haggard, we may lag eternally behind. — Adam Cathcart

Queen’s University, Belfast

Editor-in-Chief Adam Cathcart will be moving to the UK in September and taking up a lecturer post in the Department of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Apart from his regular posts on SinoNK and on his personal website, SinoMondiale, Cathcart recently published the following essays:
The Slick PR Stylings of Kim Jong Un,” (with Isaac Stone Fish) Foreign Policy, July 12, 2012.

The Ghost of Dulles Lives On | Image via Encyclopedia Britannica

Assistant Editor Steven Denney recently published at e-Ir.com, a web-based publication for advanced graduate students, in an article entitled “The Cold War is Sustained Through Pyongyang: The East-West Divide in Northeast Asia.” His piece, written following the May 21 tri-lateral talks between Seoul-Tokyo-Washington, explains the broader geopolitical significance of cooperation between the three nations regarding North Korea. Although the tri-lateral meeting may seem, prima facie, a rather insignificant event, when contextualized, a different story emerges. In the last 20 years, a new Cold War is emerging, one that centers around Pyongyang–a city that divides the region between Continental and Oceanic power blocs. From Denney’s article:
From a geopolitical perspective, the [tri-lateral talks] can be interpreted as a sign of the lingering East-West divide in northeast Asia. Though much has changed in the region since the Peninsula was first divided following Word War II, there has been just as much continuity. In a way similar to Kim Il-sung’s strategy of exploiting the U.S.-Soviet divide in order to receive material aid and diplomatic support from Moscow, the current North Korea strategy is to manipulate the burgeoning U.S.-Sino split to the benefit of the current regime in Pyongyang under the leadership of Kim Jong-un.
As more recent events like the Japan-ROK-US joint naval exercise off the coast of Jeju island confirm, the Cold War is indeed sustained through Pyongyang.
Also, The Yonsei University Journal of International Studies, the journal for which Denney is Editor in Chief, recently published Volume 4, Issue 1. Visit the link for a recap of the published articles pertinent to peninsula issues and to find out how to obtain a free copy.
Coordinator Roger Cavazos has been staying off the streets recently by writing articles and continuing his work as Weekly DPRK Contributor at The Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report, which presents articles and full length reports each week in six categories: Austral security, nuclear deterrence, energy security, climate change adaptation, the DPRK, and governance and civil society. Contributors carefully select items highlighting the links between these themes and the three regions in which Nautilus offices are found—North America, Northeast Asia, and the Austral-Asia region. (www.nautilus.org)

US Consulate Shenyang – always a welcome site when traveling 在中国东北部 in Northeastern China.

In addition to his trenchant and witty essay on Chinese messaging to the DPRK during the boat hijackings in May, Cavazos recently published the following articles:
“Mind the gap between rhetoric and reality: Can DPRK really turn Seoul into a Sea of Fire?” (Nautilus)
“Could U.S. Special Forces Really Infiltrate North Korea?” (NK News)
“China First:  How Beijing is reconsidering its relationship with DPRK (NK News)
 Concluding Notes  | As a team, our production all remains on the website for your research and reference.  We’re trying new styles and designs to make it easier to find that “nugget” in our specialized fields. 
We’re getting also more mainstream media recognition such as International Herald Tribune (International Version of The New York Times) referencing Jimin Lee’s article “Putting the Mass in Performance: Reflections on the Re-initiation of Arirang Season.”
It’s going to be an exciting summer with new analysis, interesting observations and niche insights you won’t find anywhere else.

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