Author Archive

Politics and Pollack: Fishing in the Age of the Six Goals

By | June 17, 2014

Continuing his series of essays focusing on maritime development in North Korea, Robert Winstanley-Chesters encounters the pelagic realm of the 1970s, revealing deficiencies in Kim Il-sung’s persistent attempts to increase the nation’s harvest of fish.

Politics and Pollack: A Piscine Story

By | May 30, 2014

Despite the importance ascribed to all parties of the Northern Limit Line, focus on developmental issues of a maritime nature has not been widely forthcoming. Robert Winstanley-Chesters applies a corrective, with the first of three essays focusing on the narratives, politics, and projects of North Korean fishing.

Yongusil 33: The Sun, the Arrow, and Benjamin Joinau

By | May 07, 2014

Benjamin Joinau’s conceptual review of mythic and monolithic city spaces of Pyongyang produces an categorical twin. Rural charisma meets urban glory in a key work of psychogeographic imagination.

Yongusil 32: Korean Jamboree at the AAS Annual Conference

By | April 30, 2014

Sino-NK’s Director of Research captures and evaluates the Koreanist scholarship presented at last month’s Association of Asian Studies annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Vanadium and Socialism: Rare Earth Prospecting, Politics, and History in North Korea

By | April 28, 2014

Behind every cloud there is a silver lining and behind every developmental story in North Korea there is a narrative from Kim Il-sung. Robert Winstanley-Chesters investigates the pre-history of SRE Minerals’ contemporary Rare-Earth gambit.

Yongusil 31: Kraus, Cumings, Kim, and Cathcart on North Korean Captured Documents

By | April 21, 2014

Study and scholarship focused on North Korea necessarily moves through a historical hinterland. A key panel at this years’ Association of Asian Studies Conference examined the buried, semi-hidden narratives revealed in Record Group 242, the Captured Documents Collection at the US National Archives.

“The Theatre of Farm Fields:” Kim Jong-un and the Subworkteam Leaders

By | March 30, 2014

Kim Jong-un has asserted that “the ideological and spiritual qualities of our agricultural working people have been transformed remarkably.” Robert Winstanley-Chesters investigates.

Yongusil 29: In Pyongyang with Erik Cornell

By | March 18, 2014

Looking behind around and behind much of the sound and fury of current analysis of North Korea, In Pyongyang presents the first of a vital series of recorded interviews with more long term and considered engagers of North Korea. The first features Sweden’s initial Charge d’Affaires to Pyongyang, and author Erik Cornell.

Raising a Fiercer Wind: Meetings and Messages

By | February 12, 2014

Robert Winstanley-Chesters examines the scaling and rescaling of important political and narrative messages in 2014 and 1964, including the vital role played by group meetings at different institutional levels.