Kim Il-sung
“Victory Day,” the Canonization of Kim Jong-il, and North Korean Succession Politics
Why did the North Korean commemorations of the July 27, 1953 Armistice dwell so heavily on Kim Jong-il, who was just a child during the Korean War? Adam Cathcart investigates how shifting histories in Pyongyang are laying the groundwork for ongoing succession narratives for the present leader.
Yongusil 31: Kraus, Cumings, Kim, and Cathcart on North Korean Captured Documents
Study and scholarship focused on North Korea necessarily moves through a historical hinterland. A key panel at this years’ Association of Asian Studies Conference examined the buried, semi-hidden narratives revealed in Record Group 242, the Captured Documents Collection at the US National Archives.
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.
Kimism’s Great Christmas Power Grab
When the Kim regime arrested, tried and swiftly executed Jang Sung-taek in December 2013, it was implementing the ancient maxim about the relative power of regents and monarchs, and following the ruthless logic of autocracy everywhere. Machiavelli would not have been in the least bit surprised by the death, as Christopher Green investigates in another of his columns for Groove Korea.
Yongusil 23: Adam Cathcart at Ohio State University
Dr Adam Cathcart makes the Sino-NK team’s first public foray of 2014 with a presentation addressing Chinese and North Korean relations at Ohio State University.
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