Featured Essays
Neglected Voices: The Forgotten Psychological Effects of Korean War Bombings
An exploration of the difficulty of excavating civilian voices from the carnage of the Korean War.
Brazil and Mexico’s Relations with North Korea
Sino-NK has looked at the roots of Brazil’s engagement with the Korean War armistice, with a nod to the 50,000 Koreans resident in the country. In this essay, Anthony Rinna looks back to 2017, when Brazil and Mexico showed a notable contrast in their approaches to the DPRK.
Power and the Periphery: The North Korea Factor in Sino-American Relations
North Korea is a constant feature, albeit an inconsistent one, in various aspects of China’s relations with the US. Anthony Rinna provides a reminder.
The Manchurian Myth: History and Power in North Korea
As the smoke clears from Kaesong and succession talk swirls around Kim Yo-jong, Sino-NK revisits one of the key foundations of North Korean history education.
Chinese Doctors and North Korea: Reviewing the Pattern
A Reuters report on Chinese doctors treating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un spurs Adam Cathcart to deeper investigation of party-to-party medical relations.
COVID-19 in North Korea: A Mirror into the Soul of the South
An outbreak of COVID-19 in North Korea may, indeed, become the ending point of greater cooperation between the two Koreas for the time being, but the two Koreas were arguably never really that close in the first place. Robert Lauler explains.
Six Hours to Midnight: GSOMIA and the US Indo-Pacific Strategy
South Korea’s narrowly-avoided decision to terminate GSOMIA underscores how the ROK’s defense priorities in Northeast Asia affect the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy as a whole.
Live from Korea, live from anywhere: a review of “K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance”
Musician and scholar Wonseok Lee, in his debut publication for Sino-NK, offers a review of Suk-young Kim’s “K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols and Media Performance”.
55 Remnants of Conflict: The Korean War Prisoners Who Chose Brazil
At the end of the Korean War, 88 North Korean and Chinese POWs decided to gamble on lives in third countries, eschewing South Korea and Taiwan. 55 were resettled in Brazil. These are their stories.
Law, Order, and Heroin in Dandong
The border city of Dandong maintains an important position for the Chinese Communist Party in its relations with the Kim Jong-un regime. Adam Cathcart investigates the latest sources.
Minority Affairs in the Xi Jinping Era: Hardened Cadre on the Periphery
What does the increasingly harsh tone of Chinese Communist Party’s policy toward ethnic minorities mean for Koreans in the northeast? Adam Cathcart looks at officials and the new Xi environment.
The ROK-US Alliance and Great Power Tensions
Anthony Rinna looks at the future for Seoul in a challenging century: reliant on China for its economic wellbeing and the US for its security, the DPRK may end up being the least of its problems.
Small but Indispensable: South Korea as “Jungjaeja”
Does South Korea have much room to manoeuvre in the aftermath of the failed Hanoi talks? Yujin Lim looks at the small power as mediator.
The Mango Mousse Incident: the Flexible Nature of the Dokdo/Takeshima Conflict in Inter-Korean Engagements
Dokdo is a returning theme in North-South Korea relations, one that reveals the long-standing dance of attraction and repulsion between the two Koreas. In a new essay for Sino-NK, Ifang Bremer looks at the evidence.
Russia and Korean Security: The Views from Seoul and Tokyo
Anthony Rinna looks at how Seoul and Tokyo have been dealing with Russia in a world of neo-Cold War tensions between Moscow and Washington.
