Sino-NK

Welcome to the new home of Sino-NK: we are sure you’ll like it!

Since it was launched in the lee of Kim Jong-il’s passing back in 2011, Sino-NK has seen a lot of changes. However, few could be as exciting as the launch of our new website, and along with it an opportunity to better tailor our working environment to the needs of both the people who present their research and ideas here and those of our rapidly increasing readership.

We would not have been able to build our plush new abode without the generosity of the extended Sino-NK team and our broader community. A great many scholars, analysts, journalists, and students have invested considerable sums of money to ensure that Sino-NK, which is oft cited in scholarly and journalistic publications alike, can move forward and grow. It is our immense pleasure to be able to offer a special thanks to those people outside the Sino-NK team for their generosity in making this happen. The site, a noteworthy digital resource for the analysis of Northeast Asia and, more particularly, China-DPRK relations, is now set to move to the next level.

The new site has three main areas: Featured, Research Room, and Jangmadang. Enter those sections and you’ll come across further delineations: there are Essays, Interviews and Book Reviews under the Featured heading, and Events and Resources under the Research Room. The Jangmadang is a standalone section for the time being, but there are grand plans in that department, too.

Because our new house has so many rooms, we’ll be actively dividing up our content, making it easier for readers to find what interests them. If you want longer essays that will challenge the way you think about in issue, head into the Featured section; but if you want concise, quickly digestible analysis of a news item concerning North Korea, something that you may wish to use for news reporting elsewhere, the Jangmadang is where you’ll find it. The Research Room—or as we like to call it, the Yongusil (연구실)—will be your go-to space for events that feature the growing Sino-NK team as well as links to our combined output and pertinent analysis of the work of others.

And while you’re browsing, check out the new Staff page.

Bricks and mortar are one thing, but a no new home is complete without some furniture. In other words, we’ve worked hard to furnish the place before you turned up. We’ve published three brand new essays, covering a vast tract of analytical space: the first on the Sincheon massacre, one of the Korean War’s bloodiest episodes; the second on children’s literature in contemporary North Korea; and the third dealing with legacy politics (유훈정치; yuhun jeongchi), not in North Korea, but in the South. There is also a great Jangmadang missive examining some of the latest South Korean opinion poll data on North Korea and a Research Room post that presents a pdf of Sino-NK’s interview with agronomist Tom Morrison.

So, without further ado, dive in!

The Sino-NK Team