Borderlands… Bubble at the Summit: Insecurities in Kim Jong-un Itineraries 23 Apr 2015 Is Kim Jong-un staggeringly confident, or do his behaviours and travel itineraries betray personal neuroses and structural fears? The short answer is that it depends on the issue under discussion. Let's…
Borderlands… Toward understanding North Korean state fears of Dandong 27 Mar 201527 Mar 2015 On March 26, the Korean Central News Agency reported at length on a truly remarkable press conference. I say "remarkable" because it dealt with a topic that, if even half of…
Borderlands… Fireworks from the Bunker: North Korea’s Role in Borderless Tourist Zone Revealed 5 Mar 2015 Everything about this Reuters piece about a possible breakthrough in Chinese-North Korean cross-border tourism is great, until: "The [tri-national] zone is the latest push by North Korea to transform itself…
Borderlands… Strung Out: Fencing and Security on the Chinese-Korean Frontier 13 Feb 2015 Q.: Have you heard anything about how extensive the fencing is along the North Korea-China border? A.: Ishimaru Jiro of AsiaPress travels the Tumen Valley extensively. This past summer in a…
history and memory… Does North Korea Have Two Rulers? Visions of the Female General 8 Jan 20158 Jan 2015 In a Reuters dispatch published today, James Pearson uses multiple perspectives to reflect on Kim Jong-un's 8 January birthday in North Korea. In the end, it appears that the ostensible 32nd…
China… Toward a Transnational History of Manchuria and the Korean War [Updated] 13 Nov 20142 Mar 2015 In November 2014, I presented 'Toward a Transnational History of Manchuria and the Korean War, 1945-1955' at the Institute of Historical Research, as part of the Comparative Histories of Asia seminar…
Borderlands… Three Questions on Dandong and Chinese-North Korean Economic Relations 19 Oct 201419 Oct 2014 As the third China-North Korea Trade Fair continues, a few questions (modified from those posed by a stalwart reporter from a northern European news magazine roaming Liaoning province) and tentative…
Borderlands… The Dandong Trade Fair 18 Oct 2014 As the rest of the world gets accustomed to seeing Kim Jong-un walk with a cane, we might do well to figure out what, if anything, is changing about the…
Borderlands… Yuanization and Currency Politics on the DPRK’s Chinese Frontier 22 Sep 201422 Sep 2014 North Korea’s long border with the People’s Republic of China is often seen as a permeable membrane for the movement of people and goods — in other words, as a…
Adam Cathcart 