Author Archive
Footsteps and Deterritorializations: “And did those feet in ancient times…”
Rodong Sinmun reports on a wintery children’s pilgrimage to North Korea’s northern border, the place where, four score and ten years ago, Kim Il-sung crossed the Yalu. Political geographer Robert Winstanley-Chesters investigates the implications of their reenactment.
Yongusil 58: Benjamin Habib: Building a Literature of North Korean engagement with the UNFCCC
Following its minimal attendance at recent COP meetings of the UNFCCC, North Korea’s concerns and aspirations surrounding climate change are unclear. Benjamin Habib’s new article for Pacific Affairs seeks to determine causality and assess future intention.
Yongusil 57: BC Koh and North Korean Autonomies: Pacific Affairs Perspectives
This past December, the journal Pacific Affairs asked B.R. Myers, et al., to undertake a review of BC Koh’s classic 1965 paper “North Korea and its Quest for Autonomy.” The Yongusil considers the encounter.
Mountains and Seas of Gold: 2015 New Year’s Message
Robert Winstanley-Chesters returns to Sino-NK with his thoughts on Kim Jong-un’s 2015 New Year’s Address from a developmental and narrative point of view, going past – way, way past – debatable calls for inter-Korean rapprochement to look at the developmental sloughs and sumps therein concealed.
Spaces of Leisure: The Socialist Modern at Rest and Play
In this final essay of a new triliogy, Robert Winstanley-Chesters traces connections between early repertoires of promenading on the banks of the Taedong and contemporary watery manifestations at Munsu and Rungna.
Yongusil 48: Korean Studies Graduate Conference 2014 at St. Petersburg State University
Korean scholarship on the banks of the Neva river has been ongoing for the best part of 150 years, and the Korean Studies Graduate Students Convention in Europe 2015 sought to continue the tradition. This Yongusil explores the exceptional contributions from Jerome de Wit, Andrew Jackson and others.
Spaces of Leisure: From Cinematic Birth to Physical Culture
Considering the development of leisure and entertainment in North Korea Robert Winstanley-Chesters tracks its movement from initial strategies focusing on the purely ideologic, political or cultural, to a return in the 1970s to a focus on sporting activity and spatiality.
Spaces of Leisure: A North Korean (Pre-) History
In the first of three essays, Robert Winstanley-Chesters analyzes the disconnect between North Korea’s revolutionary culture and the existence of consumption space, uncovering a pre-history of leisure and entertainment in North Korea.
Politics and Pollack: It Takes a Nation of Fishes
Bringing his Politics and Pollack series to a close, Robert Winstanley-Chesters explores the most recent pelagic developments in North Korea, focusing on the January 8 Fishing Station and the problematic notion of “charismatic time.”