Uncategorized Deviants at the Founding: Socialist Nostalgia in China and North Korea 14 Apr 20137 Jan 2015 Socialist nostagia is a powerful thing in northeast Asia. Kim Jong-un -- or, perhaps more correctly, the committee who writes his speeches -- evinces a key understanding of this nostalgia, and…
Chinese communist party… Manchurian Base Camp, Part III: The DPRK’s Northeastern Strategy 15 Sep 201015 Sep 2010 Manchurian Base Camp, Part I: In the 1930s Kim Il Song regarded Manchuria, or Northeast China, as an immense area into which to project anti-Japanese struggle and wherein he could…
North Korea… Reading Kim Il Sung’s Memoirs [1] 6 Aug 20106 Aug 2010 Although no one seems to be writing about the topic, Kim Il Sung's life and works are likely to play an important role in justifying any new direction taken in…
North Korean border region… Sino-North Korean Links for July 26, 2010 26 Jul 201026 Jul 2010 Note: I'm breaking slightly from my previously-announced fortnight blogging hiatus to try something new: a sort of collection of links on North Korea and Sino-North Korean relations which attempts to…
EU-East Asia relations… Did Kim Jong Il Visit East Germany in 1960? 16 Jul 2010 Kim Jong Il biographers appear to be conflicted about the young man's whereabouts in the year 1960. Was the nineteen-year-old future leader traveling around the German Democratic Republic, or was…
history and memory… Stories to Follow 15 Jul 201015 Jul 2010 I recommend you watch how these stories develop, since most of them have yet to be really reported in the Anglophone press: 1. Legacies of Japanese imperialism in Manchuria Chinese…
German… Kim Il Song//North Koreans in Berlin 23 Jun 2010 Yesterday I ordered and got into my hands a pile of letters from Kim Il Song to the East German leaders from 1955-56. The man has a quirky signature, and…
Korean War… You Say It’s Your Birthday: North Korea Imports Chinese Automobiles as Gifts 14 Apr 2010 The Huanqiu Shibao reports that North Korea has purchased more than 100 Chinese automobiles as gifts to be given by Kim Jong Il (during the three-day period that marks his…
Art… Tropes of Victimization in North Korean Textbooks of the Late 1950s 17 Oct 200917 Oct 2009 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…
Cultural Politics… Kim Il Song’s _Works_ and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the DPRK 11 Aug 200912 Aug 2009 Kim Il Song's Works form part of the backbone of any serious student's reading about North Korea. Although this lengthy, often pedestrian, heavily edited, and occasionally fabricated collection runs to 40 volumes, there are…
Adam Cathcart 