Propaganda
Chinese Intellectuals, the CIA, and Defector Memoirs in the 1960s
Newly declassified documents shed light on a CIA operation to extract high-level intellectuals as defectors from the People’s Republic of China. We also look at defector accounts of meetings with Mao Zedong.
Review: The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War by Monica Kim
Interrogation documents, Cold War loyalties, and Japanese Americans vs. North Koreans — moments from Monica Kim’s book and insights into her expansive vision of the Korean War.
Dictatorial Consensus: South Korean Identity and Popular Remembrance of Park Chung-hee
In her debut on Sino-NK, Megan Cansfield provides readers with some intriguing insights into the connection between Park Chung-hee’s push for industrialization and the formation of a specifically South Korean state identity.
Memos from Pyongyang: A North Korean Perspective on the Otto Warmbier Case
Adam Cathcart does some further thinking around the death of Otto Warmbier, but with an underutilized angle; seeking clarity not on what Warmbier’s passing means for us, but on what it means in Pyongyang.
Buckling Down in Dandong
As Xi Jinping waxes poetic at the “One Belt, One Road” summit in Beijing, we investigate messy realities in the the Chinese border city that would be the ideal hub for any North Korean participation.