Essays
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.
Never on the Verge of War: The Birth of the Young Man Doctrine
“North Korea is not one man, and Kim Jong-un, while one man, is not North Korea,” argues Christopher Green in a monthly column for Groove Korea, a Seoul-based magazine aimed at the country’s burgeoning community of English-speaking expats.
Nationalism in an Era of Strength and Prosperity: Politics and People in Post-Developmental South Korea
In the fall of last year, South Korea sent tanks, soldiers, and missiles down the streets of central Seoul in the largest military parade seen there in almost a decade. Steven Denney and Karl Friedhoff, writing for CSIS’s PacNet Newsletter, looked for broader societal changes beyond the pomp of the parade.
Sino-NK 2013 Rewind: Pop Politics and the Narrative of the Bizarre
Sherri L. Ter-Molen takes the “outside” tack on North Korean cultural production and media engagement in 2013. From Dennis Rodman to Jang Sung-taek via Angry Birds and the Samjiyon.
Sino-NK 2013 Rewind: North Korean Literature at Masik Speed
Benoit Berthelier examines North Korean cultural production from the “inside,” revealing literary outputs determinedly in step with current manifestations of the urgent–and of Kim Jong-un himself.
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