NK Leadership

Party Leadership Transitions and China’s Relations with North Korea

By | January 06, 2012

What impact do the inner-Party workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have on the formation and execution of China’s North Korea policy? This question forms the basis of the following essay by SinoNK’s Analyst for Chinese Geostrategy, Nicholas Miller.  Miller is presently a postgraduate student at the Bush School at Texas A & M […]

Foundations (2): Kim Jong Il on Inheritance

By | January 06, 2012

Preface: Although a handful of more orthodox PRC intellectuals have remotely encouraged him to make his mark in print, Kim Jong Un has virtually no paper trail to speak of.  Analysts, however, are fortunate to have access to a huge body of work by his two predecessors.  If one thing has been made clear since […]

Foundations (1): Quotations from Chairman Kim Il Sung

By | January 04, 2012

What is new and what is old in North Korea?  As was pointed out in a particularly astute recent article in the Washington Post, especially during this transition, Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) forms the ultimate baseline for determining North Korean culture in its many forms, and for measuring its evolution. As B.R. Myers points out in […]

Gen. Guo Boxiong at the DPRK Embassy, Dec. 20

By | January 03, 2012

China’s head of state and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Hu Jintao suprised at least a few people by showing up at the North Korean embassy in Beijing the morning after Kim Jong Il’s death was announced. Although Hu could not meet the DPRK Ambassador to China (more about that in tomorrow’s […]

Documenting Chemical Weapons Facilities Along the DPRK’s Northern Frontier

By | January 01, 2012

As documented on this website, recent changes in the DPRK have prompted renewed assertions by Chinese think-tank intellectuals that now is the time for North Korea to back away from the “military-first” policy which had so distinguished – some might even say marred — Kim Jong-Il’s reign. While the public justification for this recommendation in […]