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James Church
James Church (pseudonym) is a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia. He has wandered through Korea for years. No matter what hat he wore, Church says, he ran across Inspector O many times.The Paint Dries
There is a regular posse of US policymakers and pundits who, when it comes to dealing with North Korea, like to say that Washington should not “buy the same horse twice.” Sooner or later, when something goes wrong—and it usually does—they end up galloping off on their own steeds—the Three Horses of the Apocalypse: Hysteria, Hyperbole, [...]
“The Orphan Master’s Son”: No Window
The range of topics for authors is endless, the techniques of story telling as diverse as the stars in the sky, limited only by what eyes can see—with or without reading glasses—and the public’s brain can comprehend. All of this applies in spades to Adam Johnson’s new book, The Orphan Master’s Son. Many readers are blown away by its [...]
Off To the Races
“Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant,” Frank Sinatra used to sing. The day after the memorial rally—at which Kim Jong Un stepped out smartly onto the dais ahead of the rest of the leadership, and stood looking very stern out over Kim Il sung square—things began to happen. The sound you have been hearing over the past week was not a [...]
Reflections on “The Party as the Kingmaker”
It has always seemed to me there wasn’t much to be gained by nitpicking someone else’s work. Especially when people are writing under pressure and the uncertainties of breaking events, minor differences over details need to be stifled, as Archie Bunker might say. This is one of those times. As of this writing, we are only about 120 hours [...]
James Church Hits the Interview Trail
Not long after news reports that the State Department was changing horses mid-stream in its North Korea negotiating team, James Church happened to be going through stacks of paper on his desk. He ran across this interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, the US Special Representative for North Korea Policy, from May 2010. Naturally, he [...]
Inspector O and the Tea Party
When Inspector O walked across the bridge into Tumen, it was raining hard. I was waiting in one of the cheap trinket stores, the one nearest the end of the bridge, as we’d agreed in our brief phone conversation the week before. There were no other customers in the place, but he’d told me to stand near the shelf of ashtrays in the shape of T42 [...]
