Borderlands
Bullet Trains and Wood-Burning Trucks
In an effort to cut down travel time and spur economic growth, China is lacing high-speed rail throughout its northeastern provinces. Lessons abound for North Korea, as this essay from eastern Jilin indicates.
Blind Legacy: Jang Sung-taek and North Korea’s Invisible Cross-Border Bridge
The bridge between Dandong and Sinuiju is pregnant with economic potential, nearly complete, and in a very real sense associated with newly unmasked “counter-revolutionary” Jang Sung-taek. Revisiting a recent essay for The Daily NK, Chief Editor Adam Cathcart investigates.
“Unification Aesthetics:” A Review of Lee Si-Woo’s Life on the Edge of the DMZ
Can the desolation of the North-South border region be understood as a “huge canvas for a meditation on life itself?” Adam Cathcart explores the relationship between the human condition and the peninsula-as-environment in this review of Lee Si-Woo’s Life on the Edge of the DMZ.
Premier Pak Pong-ju: The Helmsman Looks North
If the DPRK’s new Premier is indeed seeking economic reform and outside investment, all roads surely lead north, as Adam Cathcart argues.
The Golden Age Is Over: Stacking Up Borderlands Sources in Dandong
Are dozens of Chinese capitalists really camping out in Pyongyang, trying to get their money back? Adam Cathcart translates and goes back to the future to find out.
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