China-to-North Korea Tourism: A Leisure Business on a Tense Peninsula

Reviewed by: A Misunderstood Friendship: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 by Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia Adam Cathcart (bio) Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia. A Misunderstood Friendship: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. xiv, 357 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 978-0-231-18826-5. Sometimes a book needs to be written to obliterate a single word in conventional discourse. In the case of Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia's new opus on Chinese-North Korean relations, the word (or phrase) is "traditional friendship." From the outset of their impressive and widely-sourced book, the authors endeavor to pry apart the building blocks of Pyongyang's connectivity with the Chinese Communist Party, and likewise to untangle how Mao and the CCP navigated their own needs while dealing with Kim Il-Sung's Korean Workers' Party. Their aim is, as they put it, a destructive one: "it is necessary to refute the historical myth, to tear off the veil, and to eliminate the special set phrases that have been used to describe the history of the relationship" (p. 2). This is a tall order, given that so much of the discussion of North Korea in Chinese official sources of late consists of little more than set phrases, or at best displaces tired metaphors like "lips and teeth" with new but ultimately meaningless phrases about "beginning a new chapter" with Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. Fortunately, the authors do not waste a lot of time complaining about the gaps in the field and get quickly to filling them instead with a welter of documents. Ultimately the book that results is aimed at a mainland audience where scholarship on Chinese-North Korean relations (really the Party-Party relationship between Pyongyang and Beijing) has been less than abundant. The Chinese version of the book, published by The Chinese University Press in Hong Kong, is accordingly longer than the present version and is likely to be even more influential given the ease with which Zhihua Shen can still fill—and amply entertain—any given university lecture hall. Zhihua Shen is well known for his extraordinary archival reach, and this study generally does not disappoint in this realm. Shen and his co-author have combed through the wide array of documents and studies of the Korean War era which were published in the 1980s and 1990s, along with extensive work in [End Page 140] the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives, readings of Soviet archives and published documents, memoir literature of participants, and even a few interviews. They also haul a number of their most fascinating anecdotes from Chinese provincial archives in Shanxi and Sichuan, from which we learn for the first time in detail about what precisely the Chinese state did with a number of North Korean elite exiles who fled from Kim Il-Sung after the now-infamous August 1956 plenum. (They ended up being labelled as ethnic Korean Chinese, working on state-run farms in Sichuan and other remote provinces.) The Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., provided a number of documents for the study, sourced out of Eastern European and German archives, and the authors make regular if occasionally baffling use of Central Intelligence Agency declassified electronic archives. A simple read through the sources which form the fundament of the book should indicate to even a casual reader that this is very much a work of Cold War history. The concerns of the authors are geopolitical—they revolve around China and North Korea's mutual appreciation and attitude toward Soviet power, their attempts to come to grips with American policy in East Asia, and the views of a multitude of communist states and interlocutors of Mao's outlook on Kim Il-Sung and vice versa. In that sense it has been shaped by the "who started the Korean War?" debate and by nature spends a fair amount of pages on Stalin's outlook and activity in managing his two client states. North Korea's drive toward economic and political development is taken up, but almost exclusively in...

North Korea today is in a state of power transition that could lead to new dangers, instability, and uncertainty. This was not the case during the first succession. Kim Jong-Il had been carefully groomed by his father to succeed him. The process had gone on for twenty years and was directed by Kim Il-Sung himself. In North Korea, all political power derives from Kim Il-Sung’s reign. At the present, North Korea refers to itself as “Kim Il-Sung’s nation.” In 1998, the North Korean Constitution was changed to enshrine Kim Il-Sung as the “eternal president,” even though he had been dead for four years. Acting in his father’s name, Kim Jong-Il was able to seize and retain power. His son, Kim Il-Sung’s grandson, must now do the same thing. The regime knows that this basis for power succession cannot be used so easily again, and is rushing to tie the young man to his grandfather’s political legacy. Even though it is clear that Kim Jong-Il has named his third son, Kim Jong-Un, as the heir, there is no sure guarantee this time that it will work well. Depending on how the succession proceeds and taking into account many unpredictable developments, a number of possibilities will arise. Before the “next leader” of North Korea takes over, there may be turmoil, confusion, and unexpected rivalries.

This paper adopts a comparative approach by focusing on a selection of early DPRK and People’s Republic of China war films made during the years that followed the Korean War. It looks into the narrative, and the aesthetics of the films in the general framework of socialist construction but also in terms of the DPRK’s shattered dream of reunification. The Korean War broke out during the beginnings of socialist construction, a time of awakening and departure into a new world. It marked the beginning of the Cold War that drew battle lines that would remain in place over the next four decades. The war also served as the theme of a number of films in both countries that reflected their war experience. For the DPRK and PRC, film provided an occasion to address the socialist construction and supremacy over the United States. While the earliest Chinese movies, The Battle of Shangganling Ridge (上甘岭 1956) and Flying in the Sky (长空比翼, 1958), focused on the heroic battles of the Chinese troops, later films such as Friendship (友谊, 1959), Raid (奇袭, 1960) and At the 38th Parallel (三八线上, 1960) recounted incidents of Chinese and Korean soldiers fighting in cooperation against the US enemy under the background of a “Resist the US and Help Korea” campaign. The eight DPRK films discussed include Again to the Front (또 다시 전선으로, 1951), Scouts (정찰병, 1953), and The Combat Unit of a Fighter Plane (비행기 사냥군조, 1953). These productions had to confront the fact that Kim Il Sung’s attempt for (forced) unification had ended in a complete failure that permeated divisions and cut family ties. The Korean War broke out during the early stages of socialist construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a time of awakening and departure into a new ideological world.1 It marked the beginning of the Cold War, drawing battle lines that would remain in place for the next four decades. When Chinese Volunteer troops entered the Korean War on the DPRK side, they were motivated, rather than by friendship, by a mutual enemy, the US, which the PRC feared might further invade Manchuria.2 The war became the theme of a number of films in the DPRK, and the PRC, reflecting their war experience. For the DPRK and the PRC, film was a means to address the process of socialist construction and its supremacy as a model over that of the United States. The DPRK’s films had to deal with the fact that Kim Il Sung’s attempt at (forced) unification had ended in complete failure, which permeated divisions on the Korean peninsula and cut family ties. In addition, the films were produced at a time when Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) sought to build North Korean society anew, in order to present the socialist system as superior to what had been before. A few years before, Mao Zedong had started to introduce socialist values among his followers during the first rectification campaign in Yan’an in 1942. However, the socialist construction period only started after the establishment of the PRC in 1949. This paper focuses on the war films made in the DPRK and the PRC during the Korean War and the years that followed it, when the Chollima movement in the DPRK (launched in 1955, in full swing by 1957), the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) and the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) in the PRC, served as ideological turning points until the beginning of the 1960s.

Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." But in the years since Stalin's demise, the Soviet Union has become much less mysterious: foreigners are allowed to enter the country with relative ease, and the Western press is able to report openly from there on Soviet affairs; a considerable number of Soviet citizens have been permitted to emigrate. Churchill's remark can be applied with equal accuracy to mainland China, but since the early 1970's, China has been an active member of the international community. Policy changes in favor of moderation, internal and external, became possible after the deaths of the dictators, Stalin and Mao Zedung, who wielded enormous personal power over their Communist parties and state institutions. Could a similar situation arise in North Korea with the death of President Kim II-sung, who is now seventy years old? If so, can we look forward to more peaceful relations between North and South Korea, as we see, for instance, in the case of the two Germanys? A change in North Korea's "enigmatic" nature in the coming decade would have a great impact on the security interests not only of South Korea but also of the major powers concerned, including the United States. North Korea faces several problems. First, it must carry out the hereditary succession of power from Kim II-sung to his son, Kim Chong-il. This has been a gradual and laborious process. Secondly, North Korea must deal with its economic problems. Many believe it is becoming more difficult for them to maintain the highly centralized command system that has existed for thirty-seven years without any fundamental reform. Sooner or later North Korea must decide whether to relax and decentralize economic control so as to overcome the economic stagnation, in which case it will risk losing political control. The third major problem centers on North Korea's relationship with the outside world, including South Korea. For ten years now there have been cautious attempts to open North Korean society to a very limited extent, in line with political demands. Is North Korea going to open up on a larger scale, following the examples set by the USSR and China or will North Korea remain the "hermit kingdom" it has been in the past? The analysis that follows examines some of these issues and options.

North Korea shows signs of openness after flood

This chapter considers three of prominent socialist states that were not directly affected by the revolutions of 1989–1991—North Korea, China, and Cuba. At the time, these states had recognized that they, too, were no longer living in the world of Marx and Lenin. In different ways, each of these states drifted away from the different conceptions of single-party rule. In North Korea, the break was complete. Under successive despots, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un, the party's leading role was fully supplanted by the institution of dynastic rule. In China, the shift was gradual and less conspicuous. A new generation of leaders, represented by Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping, routinely invoked the principle of party rule to justify their policies. But they did not necessarily practice it. Indeed, by the 2000s, one was hard-pressed to say what specifically made the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) communist. Only Fidel Castro showed any consistency, but in a way that did not serve the party idea. Although he had two options to institutionalize his vision, the party and the military, he evidently remained convinced until his final days that he was the epicenter of his country's revolution.

North Korea's Objectives and Activities in Cyberspace Daniel A. Pinkston (bio) The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) is a centralized, authoritarian, personalistic dictatorship under the third generation of the Kim dynasty. Despite having suffered a terrible famine and long-term economic deprivation, North Korea has developed its cyber capabilities into a significant and persistent threat and gained notoriety for its past hacking activities, most remarkably the attacks against Sony Pictures Entertainment, cryptocurrency and bank heists, and ransomware attacks. Pyongyang has seriously cultivated its cyber capabilities since the mid-1990s and now possesses the full range of capabilities to conduct computer network operations, including computer network attack, computer network exploitation, computer network defense, influence operations (military information support operations, information operations, and propaganda), cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and probably physical cyberweapons.1 Kim Jong-il recognized the value of cyber capabilities in the 1990s, which gave North Korea ample time to recruit and train human resources and invest in institutions to develop and sustain the country's assets in cyberspace.2 North Korea's priorities in the realm of information and communications technology (ICT) are embedded in the leadership's national strategy, which is composed of two main parts: national security and economic development. This is no different from any other state, except that the type of regime, division of the two Koreas, and external environment present a number of threats, challenges, and opportunities that affect North Korea's cyber posture and activities. This essay seeks to put North Korea's cyber activities in the context of the leadership's political goals and the country's science and technology policy. [End Page 76] After explaining Pyongyang's national strategy and the role of cyber, this essay will turn to the regime's demand for hard currency and the persistent attraction of cybercrime. While North Korean hackers successfully have demonstrated their skills, they also present a dilemma for the leadership. Who is to monitor these expert technicians? To help mitigate this problem, the regime has replicated its "coup-proofing" institutional design found in the security apparatus and the military. Finally, the essay speculates that in the future North Korea might try to employ its cyber capabilities more extensively in the realm of influence operations. Cyber Capabilities in North Korean Strategy When North Korea's cyber infrastructure took off in the mid-1990s, the country's survival was at stake. The economic shock and famine in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse and the death of founding leader Kim Il-sung led Kim Jong-il to adopt military-first politics that served as a type of public administration and crisis management system for regime survival.3 Kim Jong-il emphasized national security and military affairs with the aim of achieving a strong and prosperous country.4 To accomplish this goal, Kim Jong-il envisioned North Korea being strong in three dimensions: ideology and politics, military power, and the economy. He stated that "science and technology is a strong impetus for building a strong and prosperous country," while emphasizing "science as an important part of his strategic line to build a powerful socialist state."5 Kim Jong-un has continued his father's emphasis on science and technology. Under his rule, North Korea has been following the pyongjin line, which seeks the simultaneous development of nuclear technology (both military and civilian) and the economy. After Kim declared in his 2018 New Year's address that North Korea had "perfected the national nuclear forces," Pyongyang—at least nominally—shifted its emphasis to the economic portion of pyongjin.6 Science and technology, including ICT, are considered critical foundations in the leadership's effort to boost economic [End Page 77] output and efficiency.7 In his report to the 7th Party Congress in May 2016, Kim called for breakthroughs in advanced technologies such as information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, new materials technology, new energy technology, and space technology.8 North Korea's current five-year economic plan (2016–20) calls on science and information technology as instruments to normalize production in strategic industries.9 To foster the development of human resources in ICT, North Korean schools now introduce ICT into the curriculum...

Food Shortage in North Korea and International Assistance

No end in sight for North Korea's malnutrition crisis

The above paper is a party-centered research and analysis of the power structure of each era in North Korea. North Korea does not seem to maintain its normal state in the North’s special political environment, which actually leads to the third succession of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, with the 8th Party congress held in 2021 in the Notth. It can be said that the Kim Il-sung era, when North Korea was founded, was some what close to the socialist state centered on the party, but the importance of the party was recognized due to the military-first politics during the Kim Jong-il era, but its role was very weak. But forming the third-generation hereditary state to Kim Jong-un, whose origins are unknown in any country, the North’s leader is trying to rule the countty today by a system based on a party-state power structure based on patriotism with in the or bit of a normal socialist state. It can be tnought that the 8th Party Congress held in North Korea in 2021 represents that. There fore, this paper predicts the relationship hetween the North Korea in 2021 represents that. There fore, this paper predicts the relationship between the North Korea party, government, and military durint North Korea’s three hereditary governance and how they will change around Rodongdang through review of existing reseaech papers, analysis of recent situation in North Korea, and analysis of nuclear power plant data related to North Korea.

OverviewThe tension on the Korean Peninsula decreased immediately following the dramatic reconciliation, in June 2000, between Kim Il-Sung, former leader of North Korea, and Kim Dae-jung, president of South Korea. President Kim Dae-jung adopted a policy of engagement toward North Korea called the Policy. Subsequent to President Kim Dae-jung's five-year rule, President Ro Moo Hyun inherited the engagement policy from his predecessor. Under the Sunshine Policy, South Korea provided North Korea with generous economic aid on an annual basis from 1998 to 2007.At the beginning of 2008, South Korea switched from a one-way engagement policy to a policy of give-and-take. South Korea's new president, Lee Myung Bak, inaugurated in February 2008, initiated this policy shift. President Lee came to believe that South Korea's engagement policy had failed. In February 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the U.S.Under the Clinton administration, the U.S. attempted to settle disputes through direct dialogue with North Korea. It is reasonable to assume therefore that under the Obama regime, more of a direct dialogue between North Korea and the U.S. may be pursued to resolve pending issues, including North Korea's development of weapons of mass destruction and support of rogue terrorist states.North Korea has been excessively provocative in recent years. On October 9, 2006, North Korea test-launched a nuclear missile. Neighboring countries immediately expressed serious concern, and the U.S. nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, doubled his efforts to ensure that North Korea fulfill its agreements on denuclearization through the Six-Party Talks countries; namely, South Korea, North Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S. North Korea agreed to disable the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and to dismantle nuclear facilities in the interest of nonproliferation. The international community is watching closely to determine whether North Korea will fulfill its obligations under these agreements. Kim Jong-il has to decide whether he will take further steps to put North Korea in the nuclear power club-which would be likely to invite furious resistance from the Western world-or opt instead to abandon the nuclear program to improve international relations.The purpose of this paper is to envisage President Obama's North Korea policy by applying game theory. In game theory, players try to adopt the best strategy, given their objective function. There have been six major players so far in the Korean Peninsula's nuclear conflict. We point out that interstate differences in the objectives between the national leaders and the party/military leaders have undermined the Six-Party Talks.This paper focuses on the game play between North Korea and the U.S. Although Kim Jong-il can effectively control his military advisers at present, there are potential divergences in their respective viewpoints, which may become more evident in the future.The Game Play in Economic Cooperation between South Korea and North KoreaIn June 2000, Kim Dae-jung of South Korea and Kim Jong-il of North Korea met for the first time to ease the tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Since this meeting, the two Koreas have expanded the scope of reconciliation and economic cooperation. The two countries agreed on the reunion of separated families, the establishment of an industrial complex in Kaesong, and the joint exploration of Kumgang Mountain as a means of promoting tourism. This honeymoon abruptly ended when North Korea fired two nuclear missiles on October 9, 2006. During the period 2000-06, President Kim Dae-jung and his successor President Roh Moo-hyun implemented the engagement policy of reconciliation toward North Korea. With generous economic aid from South Korea, North Korea was able to overcome severe food and energy shortages. In return, North Korea opened Kumgang Mountain to South Koreans, and allowed South Korean businesses to hire lower-wage workers in the Kaesong industrial complex. …

The Constitution of North Korea was enacted and promulgated on September 8, 1948 as the People's Democratic Constitution, and the Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was newly adopted on December 27, 1972, including the 2019 Constitution, which did not guarantee basic human rights such as life, liberty, and property of all people, or operate as a norm to control and limit the supreme power of the state. From a legal normative perspective, North Korea's supreme authority exists beyond the constitution and is not bound by the law, and he has no real limits to the exercise of his constitutional powers. It can be said to be a state system in which the policies of the party and the state and the state's official governance system, such as the constitution, must coincide with the will of the leader, the sole leader. Likewise South Korean rulers in the past amended the Constitution with political intentions to prolong the regime, this paper attempted to examine what the political implications of the supreme power in North Korea's constitutional amendment there were, and find out what role the Constitution played in establishing the hereditary system leading to Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong Un. In addition, it was a question about the North Korea system, how it gave legitimacy to the power succession by using the constitutional normative power for the unique national hereditary succession by blood in the socialist system. For this purpose, in particular, this paper employed North Korea's 1992 constitutional amendment, Kim Jong-il's succession to power, Kim Il-sung's posthumous rule and 1998 constitution, and Kim Jong-il's posthumous Kim Il-sung--Kim Jong-il's constitution as the main subject of research. To understand the correlation between changes in the power structure of North Korea and the constitution, this paper tried to investigate first of all, what there are in the contents of the constitutional paving stone for the succession of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong Un, and find out Kim Jong-il's posthumous rule developed after Kim Il-sung's death and the intention of constitutionalization work for the deceased Kim Il-sung, and examine how the constitutional acceptance of the newly emerged state guidance guidelines was along with the hereditary succession of state power, and what intention there was in the constitutional reflection of the governing philosophy by deleting the previous highest state position and changing the new state position. It was because of the political intention shown in the amendment of the North Korea Constitution and the desire to approach the practical legal and normative environment of North Korea.

IntroductionAfter succeeding Kim Jong-il upon his death on December 17, 2011, Kim Jongun, the new leader of North Korea, oversaw testing of nuclear weapons on February 12, 2013, marking North Korea's third nuclear weapon test.1 The objectives of the nuclear tests were those of regime consolidation of domestic political and military power over North Korea after increasing tension among neighborhood countries. North Korea's nuclear program, begun by Kim Il-sung, the country's founder, has been used strategically under the leadership of his son Kim Jong-il and his grandson Kim Jong-un.2 In this context, the first nuclear test in 2006 is still meaningful to the analysis of the dynamic reactions of the neighboring countries to North Korea's nuclear program.News of North Korea's first nuclear weapon test on October 9, 2006, made headlines around the globe. However, perhaps no five countries took such a keen interest in the issue as the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia- the nations involved in the six-party talks with North Korea, aimed at the negotiation of a peaceful solution. The underground explosion of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility in the North Hamgyong Province of North Korea was a sensational global news media issue. This article examines how native-l anguage print media from the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia presented the news of North Korea's nuclear weapon testing to their primarily domestic audiences; the news frames employed by each; and the differences in the cross-national media coverage of this single news event. Within the frame analysis, this study used war journalism and peace journalism as two competing frames in the news coverage of the first nuclear test conducted by North Korea.Media coverage of the North Korean nuclear crisis has received little attention from media scholars. In a peripheral study of media involvement in the issue, Jiang examined cross-cultural differences in U.S. and Chinese press conferences on the test.3 However, published academic research about the news coverage of the crisis is sparse. Academic inquiry into how the U.S., Chinese, South Korean, Japanese, and Russian media relayed information about an event of great national and tional to their respective audiences as well as identifying and analyzing analyzing differences in that coverage would benefit not only mass communication scholars and framing theorists, but also those engaged in diplomatic, political, or sociological endeavors in those countries. This study will begin to fill the gap in the available analysis of news coverage of the North Korean nuclear crisis, add to the body of media framing literature, and examine how each country's native news media content may have influenced how its respective audiences understood North Korea's nuclear test.News Coverage of International IssuesStudies about international news coverage have focused on the differences in the domestic coverage of international news events such as the news media coverage on the two cases of planes being shot down, the Korean Airlines Flight 007 by the Soviet Air Force and the Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy,4 the 1991 Persian Gulf War,5 the 1994 South African elections,6 U.N. conferences,7 and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.8 Other studies, though to a lesser degree, have examined cross-national and cross-cultural news coverage of various international events and issues, including the 1971 Sri Lankan uprising,9 diplomatic relations between the United States and Europe,10 the 1991 Persian Gulf War,11 the post-Cold War environment in the United States and China,12 and the Kwangju and Tiananmen pro- democracy movements.13Such cross-national and cross-cultural news analysis has only recently been thrust into the forefront of domestic mass communication research. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil demonstrated the danger of international ignorance and cross-cultural misconceptions and led to a surge in U. …

North Korea unilaterally suspended inter-Korean dialogue several times under the pretext of the ROK-US combined military exercise. This study aims to reveal that North Korea intends to engage in negotiating behavior to secure leverage in negotiations. To this end, this study analyzed the cases of inter-Korean negotiations during the ROK-US combined military exercise by dividing into cases of inter-Korean negotiations and cases of normal progress. The ROK-US combined military exercises were limited to large-scale joint exercises (such as FS and UFS). We set the analysis period was divided into Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un’s reign in consideration of the influence of North Korea’s supreme leaders. As a result, we derived the following four lessons. First, North Korea carried out inter-Korean negotiations even during the same ROK-US combined military exercise period or sometimes engaged in inconsistent negotiation behavior. Second, North Korea used inter-Korean negotiations, which were suspended during the joint military exercise, as a means of buying time by resuming them after the military exercise, but after a considerable period of time. Third, North Korea tends to suspend inter-Korean negotiations more than it does during the ROK-US combined military exercise since its first nuclear test in 2006. Based on these four lessons, we believe that North Korea has used the ROK-US combined military exercise as a leverage for negotiations.

2016년 대북제재 이후 북한경제 변화와 신남북협력 방향 (Changes in the North Korean Economy and Guidelines to New Strategies of Inter-Korean Cooperation after UNSCR since 2016)