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Aidan Foster-Carter
Aidan Foster-Carter is an honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance consultant, writer and broadcaster on Korean affairs. A regular visitor to the peninsula, he has followed North Korea for over forty years.Party Time in Pyongyang
As I write this article, April is already more than half over. In North Korea, the party is over, bar the shouting. But in Pyongyang, the shouting never really stops, or not for long anyway. True, this event-packed month is not quite done yet. The 28th April Spring Friendship Art Festival still has a few days to run, bringing to the good [...]
Is North Korea Opening? What Might That Mean?
If we have few good answers on North Korea, then maybe we need to refine our questions. Case in point: Is North Korea opening? Articles on this theme are a hardy perennial of the field. I’ve been reading them since at least the 1980s. Back then I was writing them. After my first visit to the DPRK in 1986, one of a series of pieces [...]
Whim Jong Il: North Korea’s Economic Irrationalities
This article is based on a summary of a paper for Session II, “Social Control as an Obstacle to Economic Development” for a conference on “The Viability of the North Korean Regime” organized by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, South Korea, September 8-9, 2011. Used with permission. We know the North Korean economy is [...]
Lee Myung Bak’s Nordpolitik: A U-turn in the Pipeline? (Part II)
So in case you wondered what T.S. Eliot was doing upfront in Part I of this article, the squalid take on all this continues below. It’s a gas, man But it was Russia and gas that clinched it. Take a look at KCNA—except readers in South Korea, because Lee’s benighted government doesn’t trust you to guffaw like the rest of [...]
Lee Myung Bak’s Nordpolitik: A U-turn in the Pipeline? (PART I)
The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason ~ T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935) The poet’s words are haunting. But are they true? Lee Myung Bak may be about to find out. Margaret Thatcher used to boast: The lady’s not for turning. (Literary aside: This was a nod—not that Lady T [...]
Hitting Below the Belt: Pyongyang Spills the Beans on Secret Summit Talks
Just when you thought inter-Korean relations couldn’t get any worse, they do. The North has found a fresh weapon, and on June 1, 2011 launched a sneak attack on the South—with a follow-up ambush a week later. Fortunately, we’re not talking ships sunk or islands shelled like last year. But words can do damage too, and this was a low [...]
