Yalu River – Adam Cathcart

All posts tagged: Yalu River

Distant Proximity: China and the North Korean Human Rights Catastrophe

November 20, 2014

Beijing is a long way from North Korea. Border crossing points between China and the DPRK remain open, but the potentially fastest and ‘game-changing’ of these is blocked at present, clogged up with estuary mud and the slow hatreds of bureaucratic inaction. Chinese trains that blaze up and down the northeast have yet to reach the North Korean frontier. But when they do arrive, panting with the heat and speed of a new era, there […]

Yalu River Notes: On Dandong

December 25, 2011

by Adam Cathcart

Obedient, Intransigent North Korea in the Chinese Media

December 22, 2010

by Adam Cathcart

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American Foreign Policy / Beijing / China / North Korean border region / Sino-North Korean relations / US-North Korea relations / Yanbian

Thanks to the ever-productive Joshua Stanton at the very useful but hopelessly Anglophone (and somewhat impervious) command post for North Korean counter-revolution known as One Free Korea, I got motivated to do some more analysis of Chinese sources touching upon the recent flare-up in the sea to the west (and north!) of the DMZ in Korea. As I see it, Chinese media strategy as regards the Korean crisis for the past month has centered upon […]

Reading Kim Il Sung’s Memoirs [1]

August 6, 2010

by Adam Cathcart

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North Korea / North Korean border region / Sino-North Korean relations

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 Korea, just as the present order, just as that life and those works undergird the present order even as the constant public reminders of that early era kindle a certain revolutionary nostalgia in the DPRK. Thus it behooves us to read the man’s memoirs, […]

Korea in the Huanqiu Shibao

April 6, 2010

by Adam Cathcart

Dam News: China and DPRK Agreement on Yalu River Development

April 2, 2010

by Adam Cathcart

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North Korean border region / Sino-North Korean relations

News is crackling along the frontiers of Sino-North Korean relations, and here at S.V. we thus are shaking off the torpor of spring to spring, metaphorically at least, over the Yalu. A wonderfully detailed and breathy dispatch from Dandong describes the signs of a Kim Jong-Il arrival like some kind of force of nature….While Chosun Ilbo spills doubt upon any hope of positive North Korean results. Unfortunately for those who want to sanction North Korea […]

‘Don’t Confuse UN Sanctions with Normal Bilateral Trade Relations’: PRC Foreign Ministry on New North Korean Free Trade Zone

February 25, 2010

by Adam Cathcart

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North Korea / North Korean border region / Sino-North Korean relations

Today’s Huanqiu Shibao headlines a statement made by PRC Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang regarding expansion of trade with North Korea. I’ll just go ahead and drop in the whole dispatch and translate it roughly: 环球时报记者段聪聪报道 2月25日，中国外交部发言人秦刚在例行记者会上就中国企业有可能获准开发两个朝鲜岛屿的事情表态：“不要混淆联合国制裁和两国正常的经贸往来。” Global Times reporter Duan Congcong reports on Feb. 25: Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang, at a press conference, stated [the Ministry’s] position on the situation of the possibility of Chinese enterprises obtaining permission to start business on […]