Chinese foreign policy… Poking the Wasp Nest: Shen Zhihua’s Controversial Speech on North Korea 15 Jul 201715 Jul 2017 Why should we care about scholars in China, or the complaints they have toward North Korea? Usually, readers take interest in Chinese scholarly debates because something specific and enticing has…
American Foreign Policy… American Weimar: On Hitler, Obama, and BR Myers’ Diminution of Juche 26 Jan 2016 This essay was written in Seattle in October 2011. Today I spent some time leafing through a solemn black notebook filled with sketches made primarily in the stacks at the…
history and memory… Notes on the Sinchon Massacre 16 May 2015 The death of North Korean civilians at Sinchon is significant on a few levels. On the one hand, it calls our attention to the always fractious topic of war crimes…
history and memory… Ideology and Anti-Factionalism: A Survey of North Korean Workers’ Party Publishing Output in 1958 14 Apr 201519 Feb 2018 In May 2010, the US Central Intelligence Agency released a file which it had had in its files for many decades: Korean Books (in Korean), No. 1, Catalogue of Books by…
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…
history and memory… Commentary in the Financial Times 21 Dec 201426 Dec 2014 I published a op-ed in the pages of the Financial Times in London on Friday, 19 December, entitled 'For North Korea there is nothing comic about killing off Kim': Hot-headed North Korean…
history and memory… Events in Pyongyang 10 Oct 201011 Oct 2010 Yesterday the Korean Workers' Party in Pyongyang celebrated its 65th anniversary with an immense parade that included an appearance by the new big man on campus and the putative successor,…
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…
EU-East Asia relations… Kim Il Sung in the Berlin Bundesarchiv 31 Jul 201031 Jul 2010 In a previous post, I speculated on Kim Jong Il's whereabouts in the late 1950s. Here at last is the original document (in the "unofficial translation," followed by Kim Il…
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 