Kim Il-sung

Museum Pieces: Kim Jong-un, the Korean War, and the Shadow of Maoism

By | August 05, 2013

Memories of the Korean War in China are wrapped up with painful tendrils of Maoism, argues Adam Cathcart in a piece reflecting on China’s past. The essay concludes with a full translation of a key Renmin Ribao article on China’s intervention in 1950.

Treasured Swords Finale: Abandoning a Developmental Paradigm at the Sixth Party Congress

By | July 06, 2013

Why did North Korea decline in the 1980s? And what are the historical roots of today’s “Byungjin line” resounding from Pyongyang? In the final installment of his framework-expanding trilogy, Sino-NK’s voluble environmental analyst explains.

Treasured Swords: Environment under the Byungjin Line

By | June 03, 2013

Rarely do all three leaders of the Kim dynasty go on the public record about a single policy issue, and this makes inter-generational analysis of policy tropes a thorny proposition. However, we now have access to major treatizes on land management theory from the 1960s, 1980s and 2010s. Naturally, Robert Winstanley-Chesters has them lined up for comparison.