Essays
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.
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.
