Featured Essays
Yongusil 103: The Backfire Effect of Nuclear Security Guarantees: An Explanation for South Koreans’ Support of Nuclear Weapons Acquisition
Lauren Sukin explains the results of her research experiments, suggesting that US security guarantees extended to Seoul can backfire, leading to increased support for South Korea going nuclear.
North Korea and Coronavirus: International Relations and Local Data from Dandong
Adam Cathcart reads some local public health data point from Dandong, and in the process surveys the vaccination landscape faced by a highly reluctant North Korea.
One Family, Two Stories: Russian-Korean Repatriate Experiences in Their Ethnic Homeland
Analysis of “The Tea Party”, a videoblog by Russian-Korean siblings who acquired Korean citizenship based on anti-Japanese heritage, but whose lived experiences are familiar to many migrants.
Quantifying Civilian Casualties in the Northeast during the Chinese Civil War
Did the CCP starve hundreds of thousands of civilians to death during the Chinese civil war? How can we find out? Adam Cathcart takes a magnifying glass to a popular contemporary claim.
Neglected Voices: The Forgotten Psychological Effects of Korean War Bombings
Every war is complicated, but the Korean War, an international conflict, was more complicated than most. Here, Imogen Bird explores the difficulty of excavating civilian voices from the carnage.
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.
