American Foreign Policy… North Koreans Watching Fox 24 May 2018 This post operates on sanity-preserving ground rules: No referring to: think-pieces, think-tank analyses, journalistic hot takes, outraged or absurd Tweets (other than those thumbed out by POTUS), Chuck Schumer's courageous…
Chinese communist party… Thunderclouds Over the Honeymoon: Xi, Kim, and the Trump Summit 18 May 2018 Amid the welter of diplomatic moves that have occurred in and around the Korean peninsula in 2018, the two meetings in quick succession between the North Korean leader and China’s…
Cultural Politics… Notes on North Korean Musical Exchanges and Internal Narratives 30 Mar 20186 Apr 2018 A lot of people seem to be interested in North Korean cultural diplomacy these days, so the (often peer-reviewed/probably badly flawed/usually enormously fun) work which I have been doing on…
American Foreign Policy… New Book Reviews: Espionage in Republican China, and Britain’s Role in the Korean War 30 Mar 201830 Mar 2018 My two new book reviews engage with the intelligence history of two chaotic decades in China, and the British role in the Korean War, respectively. Review of Panagiotis Dimitrakis, The…
American Foreign Policy… On Red Lines and Reunification: Recent Remarks by the CIA Director on North Korea (updated) 31 Jan 20185 Feb 2018 [UPDATED on 5 February 2018:] Donald Trump surely makes the North Korean state nervous. But when CIA Director Mike Pompeo actually emerges from his operations bunker in Virginia, he tends…
Art… Resources on North Korean Music Diplomacy 21 Jan 201821 Jan 2018 One strand of my ongoing academic work as a historian of Northeast Asia concerns music and cultural diplomacy in and by North Korea. My published online work on this…
American Foreign Policy… Trump, Nixon, and Gambling on the Korean Peninsula 29 Nov 2017 This essay fragment was written in December 2016, and has not previously been published. If you’re a gambler, the odds are good that Donald Trump will face a North Korea…
Kim Jong-un… Right of Reply: Kim Jong-un’s Rejoinder to American Threats at the UN General Assembly 22 Sep 2017 I imagine that most people did not expect Kim Jong-un to make a direct statement to President Trump -- I certainly didn't. But the North Korean leader has done so,…
Cultural Politics… North Korea as Cinematic Enemy: Donald Trump and ‘Olympus has Fallen’ 24 Aug 201720 Aug 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqFflLkbl1w I'm a historian of contemporary Northeast Asia, which means that narratives having to do with the Cold War or with peace and war in the region today interest me,…
My Publications… Writings and Media Work: July 2017 27 Jul 2017 For whatever reason, July has been a particularly active month in the various cockpits where I do my work -- coffee shops, trains rocketing between Leeds and London, my university…
