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Kim Jong-un’s Cane and the Manchurian Guerrilla Faction: BBC Interview
In the pre-history and contemporary history of both the People’s Republic of China and its North Korean counterpart, purges have been a regular — if unpredictably appearing — phenomenon. Kim Il-sung’s...
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Rounding Up the Roundups of Kim Jong-un’s First Three Years in Power
One Year after the Execution of Jang Sung-taek: The Shifts of Power and Privilege in North Korea (KINU, PDF) http://t.co/gCwWgf9ml3 — Dr. Mark P. Barry (@DrMarkPBarry) December 29, 2014 '2015 will...
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Bubble at the Summit: Insecurities in Kim Jong-un Itineraries
Is Kim Jong-un staggeringly confident, or do his behaviours and travel itineraries betray personal neuroses and structural fears? The short answer is that it depends on the issue under discussion....
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Full Comment on the North Korean Execution Rumours
Adam Taylor at the Washington Post was kind enough to get in touch with me for a piece he wrote about some recent and rather grisly execution rumors stemming from new satellite imagery as interpreted...
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Notes on the Sinchon Massacre
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 in Korea, and the contested nature of...
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On Kim Jong-un’s ‘Achievements’ and the North Korean-Chinese Relationship
This past December, many observers of the scene in northeast Asia had questions about the ‘three-year mourning period’ which was coming to an end, ostensibly, in North Korea. Since Kim Jong-il had been...
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Preparing for Doomsday, or October 10, in North Korea
North Korean state media has begun to really ramp up the name-calling at South Korea again. In response to South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s complaint that the ROK was not consulted about the...
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North Korean Forestry Purge Rumors, and the China Angle
John Power, writing at The Diplomat, asks how credible the latest rumour is from South Korea. Was Choe Yong-gun killed for disagreeing with the Supreme Leader on forestry policy? He (the journalist,...
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‘Day of Songun’ and the Ongoing Succession Process in North Korea
It is a coincidence, but an interesting one, that North Korean representatives concluded their negotiations with South Korea just in time for August 25, the ‘Day of Songun’ in the DPRK. #Rodong...
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Trains, Trade, and Corruption: Dandong Data Points
While analysts were surely right to parse the dynamics of the 3 September parade in Beijing, the work of assessing the state of Chinese-North Korean relations needs to go well beyond seating charts,...
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Bypassing Beijing? North Korean Foreign Relations in April and May
Responding with appropriately prepared shock to the 15 April rocket launch, assessing the crescendo to the big Party Congress in early May in Pyongyang, adding to the noise over the defection of “the...
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Pre-emptive strike plans in Korea
In response to a question from a reporter about Operational Plan 5015: In a certain sense, the North Koreans are the victims of their own inflated rhetoric and propaganda about their missile &...
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North Korea, Opposition Politics, and British Nuclear Deterrence
I wrote the following piece for The Guardian, the stalwart newspaper for whose North Korea Network I have done a handful of essays and events over the past couple of years. After much back and forth...
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Why the Sky is Not Falling for Koryo Airlines
A recent UPI headline found a form of success with a big claim: “North Korea’s Air Koryo suspended operations again.” Good heavens! I thought. This could be a major blow to Kim Jong-un, who has...
View ArticleJoshua’s Map: Beijing’s Coverage of North Korean Defector Issues and Human...
In January/February 2015, the Huanqiu Shibao (the foreign affairs tabloid under Beijing People’s Daily, massive readership etc.) used one of Joshua Stanton’s maps to indicate the locations of North...
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Right of Reply: Kim Jong-un’s Rejoinder to American Threats at the UN General...
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, adding yet another layer of surprise...
View ArticleCoupling and De-coupling the North Korean Missile Program from the Kim...
An essay earlier this year by Fyodor Tertitsky, and a recent NewsHour interview with missile specialist Jeffrey Lewis, got me thinking about the nature of the relationship between reform and...
View ArticleOn Red Lines and Reunification: Recent Remarks by the CIA Director on North...
[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 to speaks...
View ArticleThunderclouds Over the Honeymoon: Xi, Kim, and the Trump Summit
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...
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