Thursday, August 22, 2013

The Long March to a Brave New World

As regular visitors to Destination Pyongyang will surely have noticed, I have adopted an extremely light posting schedule. The truth is that something had to give: international team for Daily NK, co-editor of Sino-NK, regular contributor to multiple publications, occasional appearances in the international media, and a PhD at Cambridge University.

That being said, when I publish something elsewhere I'll try to post it here as well, and the Twitter feed @Dest_Pyongyang will remain as lively as ever!

Best regards,

Chris

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Monday, February 11, 2013

Taking the Post Out of Post-Totalitarian

You will not find a defector from any level of the North Korean regime who thinks Kim Jong-il's ruling style was less totalitarian than that of Kim Il-sung. In fact, the majority of those who run away from the upper echelons of the Pyongyang elite think Kim was more so. Here's why.

Friday, January 25, 2013

22-14=?... The Mystery of the "New Camp"

There's far too much groundless speculation about North Korea going on in the world today, even more than we had all become accustomed to. So let me say one thing about this link: satellite photos do not confirmation make, and I am reserving judgement.

However! One thing is for sure: a "completely controlled zone" such as Camp 22 is what British people subjected to the rule of Prime Minister David Cameron might recognize as a "Ronseal deal"... in other words, it does exactly what it says on the tin. That does not include freedom, and they must therefore have gone somewhere.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

New Year, Same Old Fog

The endless analysis of the first televised New Year's address by Kim Jong-un means that whoever wrote it achieved his or her aim. Here's some more. The take away: 
Scholars such as Patrick McEachern, the author of Inside the Red Box: North Korea’s Post-Totalitarian Politics, are right to assume that much about North Korea has rusted heavily since the 1970s when, as Suh notes, Kim Il-sung fully consolidated what could legitimately be called his totalitarian rule over North Korea. However, arguably less has changed than many scholars seem keen to believe, and this is why all it takes is a KCNA article to send US policymakers to the bar, and a rhetorically fluffy New Year’s address to get every journalist from London to Lima reaching for the reset button just 19 days after the launch of Gwangmyungsung-3.