Essays

Mountains and Seas of Gold: 2015 New Year’s Message

By | January 27, 2015

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.

Over the Line: How Representative Was Yang Junfeng’s FT Article of Chinese Academic Opinion on North Korea?

By | January 24, 2015

Prompted by the 2013 dismissal of Deng Yuwen from his post at the Central Party School’s Study Times journal and the publication of an op-ed in the English-language Financial Times advocating China’s abandonment of North Korea, Sino-NK investigates how the Party responded and what ordinary academics really think about Sino-DPRK relations in China today.

Command and Conquer: The Co-option of Market Forces in the DPRK

By | December 31, 2014

Marketization in North Korea does more to maintain the regime than undermine it, argues Park Hyeong-jung of KINU. In the latest in a series of review essays covering key elements of contemporary North Korean economic history, Christopher Green reviews Park’s “Towards a Political Analysis of Markets in North Korea.”

Spaces of Leisure: The Socialist Modern at Rest and Play

By | November 09, 2014

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.

How Long Will the Umbrellas Hold Out? Report from Hong Kong

By | October 11, 2014

Sino-NK’s Junior Fellow for 2013-2014, Byul Ryan-Im, reports from the barricades of Occupy Central.