Posts Tagged ‘china’
War and Peace on the Korean Peninsula
Reports coming from the Korean peninsula in the past few weeks have been disturbing and contradictory. On the one hand, tensions continue to escalate as Pyongyang and Seoul are locked in an upward spiral of threats to raze each other to the ground. This is the most severe situation since the 1968 Korean crisis, when the DPRK captured the US [...]
Dealing with a Sore Lip: Parsing China’s “Recalculation” of North Korea Policy
Chinese media went wild—as wild as censored media gets—immediately following North Korea’s third nuclear test in February 2013. Global Times criticized the event as a failure of China’s North Korea policy, while Weibo was flooded with frustrated comments that called for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and even the punishment [...]
Kim Jong Un’s Foreign Policy Record: The Juche Revolution Continues
During his first year in power, Kim Jong Un maintained the strategic foreign policy line he inherited from his father without making any major adjustments. In a nutshell, that approach seeks to alter the regional balance of power in North Korea's favor, expand its resource base, and gain international recognition by building up strategic arms [...]
Kim Jong Un’s Domestic Policy Record in His First Year: Surprisingly Good
The year 2012 started with hysterical nationwide mourning for the deceased leader Kim Jong Il. The country was gripped with the fear of abandonment, uncertainty and chaos. But, by the time 2012 came to a close, one could detect hope in the air, and new positive expectations about the future. There was also plenty of public thirst for new [...]
The 18th Party Congress Crosses the Yalu: Implications for China’s North Korea Policy
All eyes were on Beijing as the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 18th Party Congress ushered in the Xi Jinping era, forcing Pyongyang to cede the title of most-watched transition in the communist world, and leaving Kim Jong Un no longer the newest ruler of an authoritarian state in East Asia. Xi, along with his six fellow Politburo Standing [...]
The Fiction of the North Korean Refugee Orphan
Recently fast-tracked to the House floor, HR 1464 (“The North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011”) has passed the House. Exploiting the rhetoric of humanitarian rescue, the bill identifies North Korean hunger as the problem and proposes U.S. adoption of North Korean children as the solution, making the figure of the hungry North Korean [...]
