“Friendship Prices”: Understanding Chinese-North Korean Energy Trade
The deepening of ties between China and other parts of the developing world in recent years has been met a great deal of hyperbole. Just as many onlookers describe China’s growing stake in Africa as “neo-colonial” (charges described and refuted in North Korean media) Chinese investments in the DPRK have also accrued a predatory stigma. But as […]
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop—Recent Activity on the Sino-DPRK Border (Part 2)
Does the North Korean National Security Agency roam the Manchurian frontier to retrieve defectors? Chinese and Korean troops and security personnel crisscrossed the Sino-Korean border with great ease during the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War, but the pretext then was much more extreme: armies of threatening enemy soldiers existed, not handfuls of refugees. […]
The Pibada (Sea of Blood) Opera Troupe Goes to China
Few countries in the world take the performing arts as seriously as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But what role do these arts play in North Korea’s diplomacy, particularly in exchanges with China, its main foreign patron? To what extent does a model work of art in North Korea, even supposedly focused on creating […]
Blog Buzz
In the spirit of Pyongyang’s speed campaigns and China’s rapid (though not entirely ungreased by corruption) railways, we would like to bring you a few of the more interesting points of connectivity from the past week. — Adam Cathcart and Charles Kraus, co-editors 1. Twitter activity was accelerated. The SinoNK Twitter feed allows you to […]
Opportunity for Engagement and Reform: An Interview with Dr. Park Young-jun
The speed with which facts, currencies, ideas and rumors flow through and weave around the Korean peninsula has clearly accellerated in the information age. Students in Pyongyang trace (if vaguely) the spread of revolution in Syria; a grainy drone strike over remote Pakistan makes the paper in Sinuiju; a village 25 miles from the Chinese border […]
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