About an hour ago at noon Pyongyang time, Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong Il had died yesterday morning in his train “from overwork.” A Chinese reporter, Zhao Shuguang [赵曙光], who described in earlier reports the North Korea leader’s desire to make it to age 70 in the year 2012, and who has […]
The Korean border news narrative of the Chinese Communist Party seems to be changing in some subtle and perhaps fundamental ways. As Michael Rank first pointed out on North Korea Economy Watch, the Huanqiu Shibao is now reporting on security problems with North Korean refugees along the Tumen River, and doing so in a relatively […]
1. Joshua Stanton’s analysis of Sino-North Korean relations on One Free Korea is stuffed with things worth thinking about. Of course, when he equates the Global Times with the Nazi organ Voelkische Beobachter, I, speaking as someone who actually reads the Global Times (usually in its Chinese version, not through partial characterizations of articles by […]
[Update: KCNA has now posted the full text of the relevant statement (h/t Igor). The nightmare scenario that prompted it -- of a U.S.-ROK contingency plan for an invasion of North Korea -- is illustrated graphically here at the site of the French-North Korean Friendship Association. Some slight BBS activity on China's Huanqiu site is […]
I did some translation work just now on Curtis Melvin’s site and thought I might toss it up on S.V. for readers who don’t frequent NK Economy Watch. (Unthinkable! ) Melvin quotes this Donga Ilbo story which describes the connection between an assassination attempt at a North Pyong’an train station on Kim Jong Il in […]
On December 8, the Huanqiu Shibao carried an item headlined “South Korean Media Reports that Two North Korean Citizens Illegally Trading Currency Were Executed [韩媒称两名朝鲜居民因非法兑换货币被枪决],” marking the first time in my memory that China has drawn such explicit attention to North Korea’s arbitrary system of justice. Not only does the appearance of this news further […]
In an earlier post I went off the handle in Beat style and demanded that the U.S. and China get serious about both engaging and pressuring the North Koreans by focusing on environmental issues: Send Stephen Chu to pound on the table at the Six-Party Talks! Blast down the tunnels at the DMZ for joint […]
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 still far too many gold nuggets in this slag mine to ignore. In this short essay I want to root around in the Works briefly to […]
Not so long ago there was a gigantic brawl at a (huge) steel factory in Tonghua, Jilin province, that left one dead and the news media all aflutter. Another sign emerges that China could come apart at the seams at any moment! I spent a couple of days in Tonghua last month, as it is […]
