Essays
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.
Vanadium and Socialism: Rare Earth Prospecting, Politics, and History in North Korea
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.
Tuning Out Beijing’s Six-Party Drumbeat: Wu Dawei in Pyongyang
What has Chinese diplomacy on the North Korean nuclear issue accomplished recently? Not a great deal, to put it mildly. Damning demonstration by Chief Editor Adam Cathcart.
“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.
Back to the Primary Source: Hunting for Kim Il-sung’s “May 25th Instructions”
1967 was a key year in ensuring that the Kim family’s iron-fisted ideological control of the DPRK would continue indefinitely. At the forefront of this process was a speech delivered on May 25 that year. The problem is that no foreigner has ever seen it, and it has long been misidentified by South Korean scholars. Hwang Jang-yop turns in his grave, while Fyodor Tertitskiy investigates.
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