Environmental Issues

Treasured Swords Finale: Abandoning a Developmental Paradigm at the Sixth Party Congress

By | July 06, 2013

Why did North Korea decline in the 1980s? And what are the historical roots of today’s “Byungjin line” resounding from Pyongyang? In the final installment of his framework-expanding trilogy, Sino-NK’s voluble environmental analyst explains.

Treasured Swords Redux: (Re)Construction and the “Rural Theses” of 1964

By | June 21, 2013

Robert Winstanley-Chesters revisits Kim Il-sung’s 1964 “Rural Theses” in pursuit of an analytical framework for assessing developmental policy under the Byungjin line. Part two of a three-part series.

Treasured Swords: Environment under the Byungjin Line

By | June 03, 2013

Rarely do all three leaders of the Kim dynasty go on the public record about a single policy issue, and this makes inter-generational analysis of policy tropes a thorny proposition. However, we now have access to major treatizes on land management theory from the 1960s, 1980s and 2010s. Naturally, Robert Winstanley-Chesters has them lined up for comparison.

From Penn State to Pyongyang: The Trans-Pacific Political Geography of Grass

By | April 22, 2013

Robert Winstanley-Chesters raises the curious and symbolic topic of grass, drawing a line all the way from Penn State to the manicured lawns of North Korea.

New Year…New (Table)Land? A Televized Address and the Curious Case of Sepho

By | March 31, 2013

Robert Winstanley-Chesters returns with a fresh opening salvo, piercing the DPRK’s mélange of environmental narratives and revealing Sepho tableland, the one that really matters.