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Why Kim Jong-un Might Turn Up in Mongolia
When the North Korean state media stops reporting on the activities of its head of state, or says he’s experiencing ‘discomfort‘ during a long absence, tongues will wag and Anglophone keyboards will...
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New Koguryo Research in Pyongyang, or, How to Revive a Historical Dispute on...
It doesn’t take much skill at reading tea-leaves in Chinese or English to recognize that Kim Jong-un’s letter of congratulations to Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, and Zhang Dejiang on the PRC’s National Day...
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Before New York: Assessing the North Korean Foreign Minister
North Korea does diplomacy like few other states in the world. The state’s well-known reclusiveness means that any foray outward is worth noticing; when combined with flamboyant attacks on adversaries...
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New European Writing on North Korea
In terms of high-quality research being done on North Korea and its ties in Northeast Asia, a great deal of good scholarly work is being done these days in Europe. Look no further than two autumn...
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Distant Proximity: China and the North Korean Human Rights Catastrophe
Beijing is a long way from North Korea. Border crossing points between China and the DPRK remain open, but the potentially fastest and ‘game-changing’ of these is blocked at present, clogged up with...
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Powerless Harmonies: Cultural Diplomacy in French-North Korean Relations
In March 2012, an orchestra of North Korean musicians went to Paris to perform, an event which gave us a very good case study of looking at the DPRK’s soft power efforts. It also provided an example of...
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Kim Jong-un: purges, paranoia, plots and the cancelled trip to Moscow
After months of public relations flirtation that led the world to believe that Kim Jong-un would be taking his first foreign trip as head of state to Moscow this month, North Korea has abruptly...
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The WIDF and the Debate over Korean War Crimes
In a recent essay for Japan Focus, Rutgers University historian Suzy Kim includes a retrospective on the Women’s International Democratic Federation’s 1951 report from North Korea and that...
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Trains, Trade, and Corruption: Dandong Data Points
While analysts were surely right to parse the dynamics of the 3 September parade in Beijing, the work of assessing the state of Chinese-North Korean relations needs to go well beyond seating charts,...
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The Moranbong Band and Regime Consolidation in the DPRK
Today, media in Beijing announced that the Moranbong Band, the all-female ensemble associated closely with Kim Jong-un, will be travelling to China for five days of performances. An academic paper I...
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Full Comment on the Latest American Detention in Pyongyang
I was interviewed for a story in TIME magazine [full citation: Charlie Campbell, “The Detention of a U.S. Student in North Korea Underscores the Risks of Travelling There,” TIME Asia, 25 January 2016]....
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Comrades in Crisis: Chinese-North Korean Relations in War, Occupation, and Today
On 25 March 2016, I will present the following paper at Yonsei University in Seoul, thanks to an invitation from John Delury and the Yonsei Underwood International College International Studies...
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Bypassing Beijing? North Korean Foreign Relations in April and May
Responding with appropriately prepared shock to the 15 April rocket launch, assessing the crescendo to the big Party Congress in early May in Pyongyang, adding to the noise over the defection of “the...
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Pre-emptive strike plans in Korea
In response to a question from a reporter about Operational Plan 5015: In a certain sense, the North Koreans are the victims of their own inflated rhetoric and propaganda about their missile &...
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China and the North Korean Workers’ Party Congress
The following is the full text of an interview I recently gave, excerpts from which will be appearing in Liberation, the quintessential Parisian daily. Q. Do we expect any senior CCP official from...
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North Korea, Opposition Politics, and British Nuclear Deterrence
I wrote the following piece for The Guardian, the stalwart newspaper for whose North Korea Network I have done a handful of essays and events over the past couple of years. After much back and forth...
View ArticlePoking the Wasp Nest: Shen Zhihua’s Controversial Speech on North Korea
Why should we care about scholars in China, or the complaints they have toward North Korea? Usually, readers take interest in Chinese scholarly debates because something specific and enticing has been...
View ArticleJoshua’s Map: Beijing’s Coverage of North Korean Defector Issues and Human...
In January/February 2015, the Huanqiu Shibao (the foreign affairs tabloid under Beijing People’s Daily, massive readership etc.) used one of Joshua Stanton’s maps to indicate the locations of North...
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Right of Reply: Kim Jong-un’s Rejoinder to American Threats at the UN General...
I imagine that most people did not expect Kim Jong-un to make a direct statement to President Trump — I certainly didn’t. But the North Korean leader has done so, adding yet another layer of surprise...
View ArticleResources on North Korean Music Diplomacy
One strand of my ongoing academic work as a historian of Northeast Asia concerns music and cultural diplomacy in and by North Korea. My published online work on this topic generally does a few...
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