So many lessons are just lying in wait for all of us on the KCNA repository of news, without which North Korea would remain but a phantom painted in dark hue by sinister CNN. Truth! Elusive commodity, elegant reality. For instance, it becomes apparent that Russian opera, Tchaikovsy in fact, is central to proving the standing of the DPRK on the world stage, at least … Continue reading KCNA Etude
Just a few scans from a single Korean source I picked up last year in Yanbian, published in Pyongyang in 1959, the year after the Chinese People’s Volunteers left North Korea and filed back into the maelstrom of Great Leap Forward-afflicted China through Dandong, Ji’an, and Tumen. Relevant manuscripts: Adam Cathcart and Charles Kraus, “The Bonds of Brotherhood: New Evidence of Sino-North Korean Exchanges, 1950-1954,” … Continue reading Tropes of Victimization in North Korean Textbooks of the Late 1950s
