Sino-NK

The Tumen Triangle Documentation Project
Sourcing the Chinese-North Korean Border
written by Adam Cathcart, Christopher Green, and Steven Denney
edited by Christopher Green and Steven Denney
introduced by James Hoare
Special Edition
January 2015
SinoNK.com

Download the full text to The Tumen Triangle Documentation Project: AKS Special Edition

Welcome to this special edition of The Tumen Triangle Documentation Project.

The bilateral relationship between North Korea and China has become part of the everyday discourse in international politics. In fact, this burgeoning trend was one of the major reasons why Sino-NK was founded way back in the long winter of 2011. But what of the meandering border region between the two?

Following on from a descriptive piece about this very borderland twenty-five years ago that appeared in Issue 2, Adam Cathcart, Christopher Green, and Steven Denney went back to the area in the spring of 2014 to find out what has changed. Armed with a generous grant from the Academy of Korean Studies, their visit revealed that some major shifts have taken place in the area over the last two decades, but equally importantly, it showed the complicated nature of the ways in which China and North Korea continue to interact.

Based on their findings from the field, over a period of eight subsequent months the Sino-NK research team published a peer-reviewed article with the Review of Korean Studies, a KEI Academic Paper on the subject of North Korea’s Special Economic Zones, an op-ed with the online news periodical Daily NK, and a great many Sino-NK essays. They tell me there is plenty more to come.

In the meantime, this special edition of The Tumen Triangle Documentation Project has a simpler goal: to offer readers an annotated digital archive of images from the trip, a permanent record of China’s Three Northeastern Provinces as they were in early 2014 plus a handful of valuable glimpses into North Korea. So as we enter the year of the sheep, enjoy these insights into a different world.

James (Jim) E. Hoare, Executive Editor
January 8, 2015

The Tumen Triangle, as visited by Sino-NK in April 2014.| Image: Curtis Melvin and Gregory Pence

Previous issues of the Tumen Triangle Documentation Project:

Issue 1, Edited by Adam Cathcart and Christopher Green, April 2013.

Issue 2, Edited by Christopher Green, February 2014.