Featured Essays
After Berlin: Assessing UK Foreign Office Talks on Korean Unification in the 1990s
FCO archive release shows division on reunification discussions between ROK Embassy, and British officials and scholars soon after Soviet collapse.
Dropping Denuclearisation: North Korea in China and US Defence Priorities
US and Chinese government decisions to soften tone on nuclear threat represents latest positive for Pyongyang amid improving ties with global powers.
Diplomatic Review, Nov 2025: Remembering Kim Yong-nam
Death of DPRK’s longest-serving, senior government official follows decades of high-level diplomacy with Chinese leaders from Mao to Xi Jinping.
Divergent Foreign Policy on the Korean Peninsula, and ROK Security Priorities
With Pyongyang leaning towards Moscow, and the US focusing more on China than North Korea, Peninsula security priorities have entered a period of flux.
Business as Usual: Liaoning Leads China-DPRK Trade Revival
Sharp increase in trade with China’s main gateway to the DPRK comes amid signs of North Korea’s economic reopening after Covid-19.
Sea Change: the DPRK, and Russia’s New Maritime Power
Growing Moscow-Pyongyang alliance poses new naval security questions for main Northeast Asian military powers the US and China.
Beyond CRINK: Southeast Asia in North Korea’s New Diplomacy
Recent flurry of high-level contact with Vietnam, Laos and Indonesia points to expansion of DPRK diplomacy beyond China and Russia.
Liaoning Leadership: Party Secretaries in Dandong and the Top Provincial Job
Appointments of Xu Kunlin and Song Cheng as CCP heads of Liaoning and Dandong indicate greater focus on economy and security.
Betting on Moscow: DPRK’s Overtures to Belarus Reflect Broader Russia Priority
In courting Belarus, North Korea is further expanding its connections to Russia, and related Eurasian security imperatives following KPA deployment in Ukraine.
Diplomatic Review, Oct 2025: First Visit by a Chinese Premier to the DPRK in 16 Years
Li Qiang’s visit to Pyongyang to mark 80th WPK anniversary continues escalation in high-level diplomacy
The Long Crane of the Law: Liaoning Corruption and the Customs Bureau
Chinese President Xi Jinping steps up anti-corruption drive against customs officials amid strong trade growth with the DPRK and South Korea
Yongusil: Russia’s New Great Game on the Korean Peninsula
Russia’s recent embrace of North Korea represents a Northeast Asia gambit that goes beyond transactional bilateralism and the conflict in Ukraine
RG 242 Files: Corruption, and Cult of Personality, at Kim Il-sung University
NARA document describes embezzlement and efforts to conceal malpractices at North Korea’s first university during early operations in 1946
Relative Power: A Review of ‘The Sister’, by Sung-Yoon Lee
First book-length take on Kim Yo-jong, youngest sibling of North Korea’s ruler, examines the sudden rise of Pyongyang’s most powerful woman
The Road Home: A Study of Stalin’s Mass Deportation of Koreans
Play captures arduous life on the Kazakh steppe for hundreds of thousands of Koreans displaced across the Soviet Union in the late 1930s
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