Agriculture
Private Plots and “Water Shaming” in Yanbian
Just across the border from North Korea, water issues around private vegetable plots are causing friction among local residents and government officials. Adam Cathcart translates.
Cultures of Critique: Kim Jong-un on North Korean Deforestation
Kim Jong-un’s recent rhetoric lamented the deforestation of the North Korean landscape; Sino-NK assesses the challenges and possibilities for innovation.
Putting Statistics to the May 30th Measure
Interpreting economic data in and about North Korea is tricky; individual data points can balloon out of control. Christopher Green looks at the debate over North Korean economic growth and what really happened on May 30.
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.
Politics and Pollack: Fishing in the Age of the Six Goals
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
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.
“The Theatre of Farm Fields:” Kim Jong-un and the Subworkteam Leaders
Kim Jong-un has asserted that “the ideological and spiritual qualities of our agricultural working people have been transformed remarkably.” Robert Winstanley-Chesters investigates.
Raising a Fiercer Wind: Meetings and Messages
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.
Framing Epistemic Communities in North Korea: From Fungus to Botanical Gardens
North Korean developmental praxis relies on epistemic communities and research institutions to achieve its goals. The country’s institutions are not only meta-devices for rolling out in reportage to add a veneer of intellectual legitimacy to centralized dictat, as Robert Winstanley-Chesters reveals in the case of Pyongyang Botanical Gardens.
