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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In 1895, the Chinese scholar Kang Youwei was on his way to Beijing on a Chinese steamer when his ship was abruptly boarded and searched by a party of Japanese soldiers on the North China Sea. “I was enraged when the Japanese came and searched our ship,” he later wrote. “If the court had listened to my advice earlier, we would not have to endure such humiliations.” But following China's defeat by Japan in the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese War, this was just the sort of humiliation that China was now forced to endure. That war had been fought over influence in Korea and it marked the end of Korea's tributary relationship with China. It was the beginning of China's decline and Japan's ascendancy in East Asian affairs. For the first time since the founding of the Chos⊖n dynasty in 1392, China would have little influence over the Korean peninsula.
1 Many thanks to Mark Selden, Mark Caprio and Jiyul Kim for their close readings of this essay and for their many valuable suggestions.
2 This is the opening scene of Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980 (New York, 1982), p. 29.
3 Balazs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: Soviet – DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Washington, D.C., 2005); Bernd Schaefer, “North Korean Adventurism and China's Long Shadow, 1966-1972,” CWIHP, Working Paper #44; Segei Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-67 (Stanford, CA, 2009).
4 One of the peculiarities of the North Korean economic system has been its history as an aid recipient. After the Korean War, the DPRK was able to secure massive amounts of foreign aid mostly underwritten by the Soviet Union. Between 1954-1956 an average of 77.6 percent of imports were financed in this way, compared to just 19.5 percent obtained through normal trade channels. During the first Three Year Plan (1954-1956), North Korea was able to obtain grants from Moscow in the amount of one billion rubles (U.S. $250 million) in free financial and material aid. Economic assistance from other socialist states also accounted for much of the DPRK's recovery. From 1953-1960, aid in the form of gifts from these “sister” regimes accounted for the financing of over 50 big local enterprises. Western estimates over the same period indicate that the Soviet Union and China together provided 42.3 percent of the DPRK's annual foreign aid. Annual Soviet and Chinese contributions during 1953-56 accounted for 25.4 percent of the DPRK's total revenue, while the remainder of the Eastern bloc contributed 9.2 percent. Soviet grants alone provided for 30 to 100 percent of national output in the industrial sectors of metallurgy, chemicals, building materials and light industry. Furthermore, an astonishing 80 percent of the goods imported by the DPRK in 1954-1960 “were charged to free aid and credits.” [See Erik Van Ree, “The Limits of Juche: North Korea's Dependence on Soviet Industrial Aid, 1953-76,” The Journal of Communist Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1989); George Ginsburg, “Soviet Development Grants and Aid to North Korea, 1945-1980, Asia Pacific Community, Vol. 18, no. 4 (1982); Joseph Sanghoon Chung, “Seven year Plan (1961-70): Economic Performance and Reforms, “Asian Survey, Vol. 12, no. 6 (June 1972); Karoly Fendler, “Economic Assistance From Socialist Countries to North Korea in the postwar Years: 1953-1963, “in Han S. Park, North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, ed. (Athens, Georgia, 1996). In the years following the Sino-Soviet rift during the 1960s, the DPRK continued to receive aid from Beijing and Moscow simultaneously. This aid played a decisive role in Kim's reconstruction plans but it failed to establish a strong foundation to build North Korea's economy. When the Hungarian Ambassador to North Korea, Jozsef Kovacs, asked Vasily Petrovich Moskovsky, the newly appointed Soviet Ambassador, why the Soviet Union acquiesced to Kim's behavior, he was told that the Soviets were forced to accommodate Kim Il Sung's “idiosyncrasies “due to the Soviet Union's antagonistic relationship with China. “In the policy of the KWP and the DPRK one usually observes a vacillation between the Soviet Union and China, “he told Kovacs. “If we do not strive to improve Soviet-Korean relations, these will obviously become weaker, and at the same time, the Chinese connection will get stronger, we will make that possible for them, we will even push them directly toward China. “(See Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, p. 190.) After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea lost its most important source of aid. Although some of the lost revenue was made up during the lush sunshine years of the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Mu Hy⊖n administrations, inter-Korean business projects aimed at developing economic engagement across the divided peninsula did not lead to the kind of casual and spontaneous contact between ordinary North and South Koreans as had been hoped, nor did any fundamental change of the North Korean economy. South Korea's two large scale projects of economic engagement, the Diamond Mountain (Kŭmgang) tour program and the Kaesŏng Industrial Park, were physically isolated from the rest of North Korea and much doubt has been cast about their transformative effects on the North Korean economy. These projects have so far had little or no effect on liberalizing North Korean economic or political stance. It is also unlikely that South Korean companies ever made any profits from these projects. Instead, they appear to be more akin to state subventions for businesses agreeing to undertake projects that have little prospect of future gains. For example, Hyundai Corporation promised North Korea US $942 million for the Kŭmgang Mountain tourism venture but it took government funds to fulfill that promise. (See Nicholas Eberstadt, The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe, Washington D.C., 2007); Haggard and Noland, “North Korea's External Economic Relations, “Peterson Institute for International Economics, (Feb 2001). Also Haggard and Noland, “Sanctioning North Korea: The Political Economy of Denuclearization and Proliferation, “Working Paper Series, Peterson Institute for International Economics (July 2009). North Korea's history of aid-maximizing may also have an addition disadvantage according to Eberstadt: “North Korea's dealings with the outside world betray a lingering confusion about the differences between business-based transactions and charitable bequests. “Eberstadt, The End of North Korea, (Washington, D.C.1999), p. 101.
5 Given the secrecy of the North Korean regime, it is not surprising that estimates of the number of deaths by famine vary enormously. North Korean officials put the estimate of deaths between 1995 and 1998 at 220,000, but interviews with party defectors indicate that those number are greatly deflated, suggesting that internal estimates range from 1 to 1.2 million. The South Korean NGO Good Friends Center for Peace, Human Rights, and Refugees puts that number as high as 3.5 million famine-related deaths or 16 percent of the population (“Human Rights in North Korea and the Food Crisis,” March 2004 [link]. A Johns Hopkins School of Public Health team working from 771 refugee interviews sought to determine the mortality rate of North Hamgy⊖ng Province, which was believed to be the most affected province. The study concluded that nearly 12 percent of the province's population had died of starvation. Extrapolating from these numbers for the whole country (which the Johns Hopkins team did not do) would yield an estimate of more than 2.6 million deaths, which is certainly too high given that not all provinces were affected as traumatically as North Hamgy⊖ng (see Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea,” p. 18). Accessing the mortality rate of the North Korean famine is also complicated by North Korea's Public Distribution System (PDS). North Korea has an extensive ration system where food is distributed on a gram-per-day per-person basis according to occupation. Implicit in this system of entitlement is also a political stratification system since class background was an important determinant of socio-political hierarchy. At the bottom of the three-tiered system was the so-called “hostile” class. These included families who had been rich peasants or whose family hailed from South Korea or Japan. The second tier, the so-called “wavering” class, was from families of middle peasants, traders or owners of small businesses. The upper tier, the “core” class, was composed of people whose families had traditionally been workers, soldiers or party members. Only members of the “core” class, which constituted roughly 15 percent of the population, are able to live in P'yŏngyang, considered a privilege. By contrast, members of the “hostile” class were relocated to remote regions of the country beginning in the late 1950s, especially to the northeast, where most of North Korea's mines and heavy industries are located (Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform (New York, 2007) pp. 53-54). This stratified classification system had important implications for the famine as it was precisely these parts of the country which experienced the severest deprivations (Bradley Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader (New York, 2004), p. 557-573; Amnesty International, “Starved of Rights: Human Rights and the Food Crisis in the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea),” 17 Jan 2004, p. 9). Although international aid began to flow into the country in 1996, these efforts were hampered by North Korean officials who barred aid workers from monitoring where the aid was going. One of the most frustrating constraints for international aid workers was the denial of access to those parts of the country that needed the most help. Good Friends, a South Korean organization involved in the aid program, estimated that as much as “50 percent of Korean aid went to non-deserving groups, including the military.” A survey in 2005 of 1,000 North Korean refugees showed that only “63 percent of the respondents reported even knowing about the existence of foreign humanitarian assistance.” (Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea,” U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2005, p. 17). In 1998, most of the non-governmental international aid groups such as Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF), Oxfam, Action Contra la Faim (ACF), and CARE, withdrew from North Korea, citing “inadequate access.” (Amnesty International, “Starved of Rights: Human Rights and the Food Crisis in the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea),” 17 Jan 2004, p. 18; Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea (Columbia University Press, 2007); Andrew S. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C., 2001). For an informative look at North Korea's penal system that expanded greatly as a result of the regime's response to the famine and the profound economic and social changes that ensued see David Hawk, “The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps: Prisoners' Testimonies and Satellite Photographs,” U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2003, and Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Economic Crime and Punishment in North Korea,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, March 2010; Stephan Haggard, “Repression and Punishment in North Korea: Survey Evidence of Prison Camp Experiences,” East-West Center and Peterson Institute for International Economics, October 5, 2009.
6 “US embassy cables: Situation in North Korea is ‘Chaotic,‘” 29 January 2010, Guardian.co.uk 29 November 2010, link.
7 See “The Crumbling State of Health Care in North Korea,” Amnesty International, July 2010, p. 14, link.
8 World Food Program, “Emergency Operation Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” p. 2. North Korea's economic plight has no doubt been exacerbated by decades of U.S.-led sanctions, but what is striking about North Korean trade is its limited success in merchandizing products in markets which had no standing sanctions against its trade. Although Washington's apparatus of sanctions has indeed “denied North Korea access to the largest single market in the world,” the American market, as Eberstadt points out, “accounts for only a modest fraction of the total imports by industrialized countries.” In fact, “nearly four-fifths of the international purchases of merchandise by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) groups come from countries other than the U.S.” The total imports of these countries in 1997 exceeded $2.7 trillion and none of these countries maintained economic sanctions against North Korea at that time or earlier. Yet, North Korea failed to make any significant inroads into these markets [Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington D.C., 1999), p. 107-8]. This performance cannot be explained away only in terms of U.S.'s hostile policies towards North Korea. Nor can it account for the refusal of the North Korean regime to embrace broad economic reforms during the generous sunshine years (1998-2008) or its decision to clamp down on emerging markets in 2005. Rather, North Korea's plight must in large part be understood as a consequence of the distinctive nature of P'y⊖ngyang's “aid–maximizing” economic strategy and closed economic system discussed in note 4. Such a system may also explain North Korea's failure to repay its debts. North Korea's economic relations with Western countries were severely damaged when it defaulted on almost $1 billion in commercial loans in the 1970s. As a result, North Korea has effectively been excluded from international capital markets and its ability to borrow internationally is “limited to relatively low volumes of short-term credits.” (Haggard and Noland, “North Korea's External Economic Relations,” Peterson Institute for International Economics August 2007, p. 15.) While many countries have fallen behind their repayment schedule, what is unique in P'yŏngyang's case is that it has made no effort to make good on any portions of these debts. Such an attitude is consistent with its previous non-repayment of loans that were extended to it by Soviet-bloc countries, the Soviet Union and China. As one Soviet source noted, “the DPRK was quite willing to reschedule its debts—but never to repay them.” Emblematic of this opportunistic view of economic relations and its “aid-maximizing” strategy is an essentially political view of international trade, which is how North Korea managed its economic relationships with the Soviet Union and China throughout the Cold War years. (Eberstadt, The North Korean Economy, p. 185-7). One needs only to contrast the specter of the DPRK economic collapse with Vietnam-style growth. Like North Korea, Vietnam was also a victim of the Cold War. And like North Korea, the United States also imposed trade embargoes against Vietnam. These remained intact until 1992, when the U.S. finally allowed commercial sales to Vietnam for humanitarian needs. Nevertheless, Vietnam began to push for export-orientation when its Soviet subsidies abruptly ended in 1991, the same period in which North Korea's export performance worsened. While Vietnam has successfully adjusted to the new global market economy, North Korea did not.
9 Debates have raged within South Korea and elsewhere, including on Japan Focus, over whether the North was responsible for the sinking of the Ch'ŏn'an. The Joint Civilian-Military Investigative Group (JIG), composed of experts from South Korea, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden, concluded in May 2010 that “the ROK's ‘Cheonan' was sunk as a result of an external underwater explosion caused by a torpedo made in North Korea (Joint Civilian-Military Investigative Group, “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan,' Republic of Korea, Ministry of National Defense, “20 May 2010.) In September 2010, the final results of the investigation were released in a 312- page document that provided the exact details of how the ship was sunk. (For the complete 312-page final report on the sinking of the Ch'⊖n'an released by the JIG, see “Joint Investigation Report on the Attack on the ROK Ship Cheonan, “Republic of Korea, Ministry of National Defense, 14 September 2010, link. Details of the investigation were also discussed in Kim Deok-hyun, “S. Korea Releases Full Report on Ship Sinking, Reaffirming N. Korea's Responsibility, “Yonhap, 13 September 2010. Bechtol provides the latest and the most complete account of events leading up to the sinking, and North Korean culpability. See Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr., “The Implications of the Cheonan Sinking: A Security Studies Perspective, “International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, 19.2 (December 2010). Despite the exhaustive evidence presented in the final report, skeptics have challenged the validity and accuracy of the JIG findings. The two most outspoken critics are the physicist Seunghun Lee of the University of Virginia and the political scientist J.J. Suh of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Based on the preliminary report, they claim that it failed “to produce conclusive, or at least convincing beyond reasonable doubt, evidence of outside explosion. “(Seunghun Lee and J. J. Suh, “Rush To Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea's Cheonan Report,“). Lee and Suh's doubt on the integrity of the investigation is questionable. The final report clearly demonstrates how a “bubble' jet torpedo “could have split the vessel in two, sinking it in minutes. They also note that even if a causal link could be established between the Ch‘⊖n'an‘s sinking and the North Korean torpedo, the critical evidence touted by the report of the han'gul writing (1b⊖n) that remained visible on the torpedo cannot be the basis for establishing North Korean culpability since it could just as easily have been written by a South Korean. But this assumes that the international team conspired with South Korean investigators to create false evidence. There is no proof of such deception. Many other outside observers were convinced by the evidence presented in both the initial and final reports, including members of the UN Security Council who stated that “the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had been responsible for the sinking. “[link]. Japan Focus articles that question North Korean agency such as those by Seunghun Lee and J. J. Suh, Tanaka Sakai, and Mark Caprio remain in the realm of conjecture and speculation. (Tanaka Sakai, “Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? A New State in the US-Korean War and US-China Relations“; Mark Caprio, “Plausible Denial? Reviewing the Evidence of DPRK Culpability for the Cheonan Warship Incident“). We may never know for sure whether North Korea was ultimately responsible. However, to give credence to North Korea's denials about its involvement in the incident is to overlook the long history of similar North Korean provocations and denials. The earliest and most prominent examples were the 1968 Blue House Raid to assassinate Park (which failed) and the capture of the USS Pueblo, the two events taking place within a week of each other. Even bolder was an attempt by some 120 NK commandos who landed on the east coast of South Korea in October 1968 in an attempt to organize local farmers and fishermen to spark a revolution. The peninsula nearly erupted into another war following the murder of two U.S. soldiers in the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the 1976 Axe Murder incident. In October 1983, North Korea attempted to assassinate then President Chun Doo Hwan and his cabinet members in Rangoon, Burma (Myanmar) (Four members of his cabinet, two senior presidential advisers and the ambassador to Myanmar were killed in the explosion. P'y⊖ngyang denied complicity in the affair, but these denials were unconvincing in light of the physical evidence and the confession of one of the North Korean officers involved in the incident. Myanmar subsequently broke diplomatic relations with North Korea and expelled all its diplomats). In September 1986, a North Korean bomb in the Kimp'o International Airport killed five and wounded thirty people. One year later, on 29 November 1987, two North Korean agents planted a bomb on Korean Air Flight 858, bound for Seoul from Abu Dhabi. It exploded in mid-flight killing all 115 people aboard.
10 This poster of a North Korean soldier smashing an ROK Navy ship was taken by a Chinese businessman visiting P'yŏngyang in June 2010. Whether or not this was an older poster that was simply re-circulated or was the same class of ship as the Ch‘⊖n'an, the message is strikingly clear. As the businessman put it: “It is hard to understand how high ranking officials can adamantly deny North Korea's responsibility for the sinking of the Ch‘⊖n'an while propaganda posters showing a ship being broken in half by a fist are in circulation.” (quoted in Bechtol, “Implications of the Cheonan Sinking,” p. 26; For analysis of the poster, see Moon Gwang-lip, “Poster in Pyongyang Recalls the Cheonan,” JoongAng Ilbo, 15 July 2010; Choe Sang-hun, “North Korean Poster Depicts a Ship Suffering an Eerily Evocative Attack,” New York Times, 16 July 2010.
11 Andre Lankov, “The Legacy of Long-Gone States: China, Korea and the Koguryo Wars,” Japan Focus, 28 Sep 2006, p. 1.
12 Archeological evidence suggests that state formation on the Korean peninsula occurred around 300 AD. This means that the three kingdoms were established after the Chinese Han Lelang period (108 BC-313 AD) when a Han Commandery occupied the northwestern part of the Korean peninsula and introduced the most important “traits of civilization” such as intensive wet rice agriculture, iron technology and writing to Korea. These “traits of civilization” spread to other parts of the peninsula to create the basis for the emergence of new Korean states that comprised Kogury⊖, Pakche and Silla. Sarah Milledge Nelson, The Archeology of Korea (Cambridge, 1993); Gina Barnes, State Formation in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. (New York, 2001); Hyung Il Pai, “Lelang and the interaction sphere: An alternative approach to Korean state formation,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 8.1, pp. 64-75.
13 Yonson Ahn, “Competing Nationalisms: The mobilisation of history and archeology in the Korea-China wars over Koguryo/Gaogouli.”
14 Lankov, p. 2.
15 Lankov, p. 2.
16 Ahn, p. 5.
17 Lankov, p. 5.
18 Sheila Miyoshi Jager, “The Politics of Identity: History, Nationalism and the Prospect for Peace in Post-Cold War Asia,” U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, April 2007, pp. 21-22.
19 Quoted in Yoon Hwy-tak, “China's Northeast Project: Defensive or Offensive,” East Asian Review, Vol. 16 (Winter 2004), pp. 109-110.
20 Yoon, p. 110.
21 Bonnie Glaser, Scott Snyder and John S. Park, “Keeping an Eye on an Unruly Neighbor: Chinese Views of Economic Reform and Stability in North Korea,” 3 Jan 2008, p. 10.
22 Scott Snyder, “Py⊖ngyang Tests Beijing's Patience,” Comparative Connections, July 2009, p.5. China's investment in North Korea and the Northeast Project is one of several major economic initiatives that China is currently undertaking. In 2009, President Hu Jintao introduced another major initiative aimed to integrate mainland Southeast Asia with China. As Geoff Wade has shown in his brilliant and detailed study of China's investment in this region, known as the “Bridgehead Strategy,” China's Yunnan Province will become the bridgehead of international transportation routes and foreign trade production bases into Southeast Asia. Most investments in the area are going into hydroelectricity development but there are also efforts underway for mining industry trade. According to Wade, “Yunnan foreign trade in the first three quarters of 2010, much of it with these bordering states, reached U.S. $10 billion, up over 90 percent on the 2009 figure.” (p. 3). A related project on the Guangxi side is also underway. Known as the “One Axis, Two Wings” project, China aims to create a 3,500-kilometer economic corridor extending from Nanning down through Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Malay peninsula (p. 3). President Hu has also announced that over the next three to five years, China plans to provide loans totaling $15 billion to ASEAN countries for infrastructural regional development. In addition to these projects, bilateral trade with Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand are being vigorously pursued. During the first half of 2010, for example, China overtook the United States and Japan to become the biggest export market for Thailand. China is also investing heavily in Vietnam. Guangxi enterprise recently signed “50 economic and trade cooperation projects worth over U.S. 1.8 billion with their Vietnamese counterparts” and trade there is booming “(p. 9). Similarly impressive bilateral trade is occurring between Laos and China and Cambodia and China (Geoff Wade, “ASEAN Divides“).
23 Choe Sang-hun, “South Korea Risks Driving North into China's Bosom,” The New York Times, 29 Apr 2010.
24 “US Embassy Cables: Kim Jong–il's Power Weakens after Stroke,” 11 Jan 2010, The Guardian, 30 Nov 2010, link.
25 “Company's $billion Pledge Would Mark One of the Largest Deals With Neighbor; Pact Was Signed After Yeongpyeong Shelling,” Wall Street Journal January 19, 2011.
26 “China's Industrial Expansion near North Korea stirs fears. Korea Times, 7 Aug 2010; “Kim Jong Il's China visit was about economy, “Korea Times, 6 Sep 2010. The ambitious plan that emerged in 1991 aims to convert an area from the Chinese town of Yanji to the Sea of Japan and from Ch'⊖njin in North Korea to Vladivostok in Russia into a $30 billion trade and transport complex. The goal is to create a free economic zone in Northeast Asia over the next 20 years involving China, the two Koreas, Russia, and Japan. While the development projects poses great potential economic benefits, implementing it has been very complicated due to political issues and the fact that the area in question will require border countries to relinquish some of its land if the overall project is to succeed. Mark J. Valencia, “Tumen River Project, “East Asian Executive Reports, Vol. 14, no. 2; Joseph Manguno, “A New Regional Trade Bloc in Northeast Asia? “The China Business Review, 20 (March/April 1993).
27 Choson Ilbo Jan 17, 2011.
28 “U.S Embassy Cables: Reading The Runes on North Korea,” 27 Apr 2009, The Guardian, 29 Nov 2010, link.
29 Tessa Morris Suzuki pointed out in her excellent essay on the North Korean Victorious Fatherland War Museum, for example, that the conflict is portrayed as a battle between the U.S. and North Korea, with almost no reference made to the involvement of any other countries in the war. “The emphasis throughout is on US imperialism and aggression, and the war, in short, is narrated as a resounding victory of the DPRK over the United States” (p. 11). Tessa Morris Suzuki, “Remembering the Unfinished Conflict: Museums and the Contested Memory of the Korean War,” Japan Focus, 27 Jul 2009. However, as Brian Myers has pointed out, this does not mean that China's contribution to the war has been completely ignored. Chinese visitors, for example, are taken to specific exhibits that do acknowledge their country's enormous sacrifice in the war, but these exhibits are off-limits to North Korean locals who “are taken on another route where they see and hear no mention of it.” (Brian Myers, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters, (New York, 2010), p. 130.
30 “Arirang Has a New Scene Reflecting DPRK-China Friendship,” 22 Oct 2010, Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK (KCNA), link.
31 “DPRK Arranges Banquet to Mark Entry of CPV into Korean Front,” KCNA, 24 Oct 2010, link.
32 “Floral Tribute Paid to Mao Anying and Fallen Fighters of the CPV,” KCNA, 24 Oct 2010. One interesting (and rather hilarious) side-note regarding Korean War Memory: During the White House state banquet hosted on 19 January 2010 in honor of President Hu Jintao, the Chinese pianist Lang Lang played “My Mother Land” which was a very popular song during the Korean War. The song encouraged the Chinese to fight the American invaders. Thanks to my colleague Qiusha Ma for pointing this out. Link.
33 Nodong Sinmun, 24 Oct 2010.
34 Nodong Sinmun, 24 Oct 2010.
35 “Speech of Kim Jong Il at Banquet,” 30 Aug 2010, KCNA.
36 Dong-A-Ilbo, 13 Oct 2010; The Telegraph, 5 Oct 2010.
37 Dong-A-Ilbo, 11 Oct 2010; Aidan Foster-Carter, “North Korea: Embracing the Dragon,” Asia Times, 28 Oct 2010.
38 Percy Troop, a Canadian tourist, photographed the painting on 27 Oct 2010 at the Rajin Art Gallery. According to Ruediger Frank, the building in the picture appears to be the Catholic church on the bank of the Songhua River in Jilin City. He suggests that the painting is linked to the increasingly frequent allusions to Kim Il Sung's youth in Northeast China in what is clearly a campaign to emphasize traditional Sino-North Korean closeness. “So the painting might actually be part of the new policy of emphasizing the two countries joint revolutionary past,” (p. 3). On the other hand, he is not entirely convinced that this is, in fact, a painting of Kim Jŏng-un. Rather, it appears to be a portrait of a young Kim Il Sung in Northeast China. (Ruediger Frank, “Harbinger or Hoax: The First Painting of Kim Jung Un?” Foreign Policy, 9 Dec 2010.) Other North Korea experts, however, are convinced that the portrait is indeed the first glimpse of the new leader Kim Jŏng-un (Mark McKinnon “North Korea's Kim Jong-un: Portrait of a Leader in the Making,” The Globe and Mail, 4 Dec 2010).
39 Choe, “South Korea Risks Driving North into China's Bosom,” NYT, 29 Apr 2010.
40 China and Russia offered lukewarm support for a formal UN Security Council statement blaming North Korea based on the findings of the Joint Investigation Group (JIG) investigation in July 2010. Seoul had invited China and Russia to send investigative teams to evaluate the incident but the Chinese declined. Russia, however, conducted its own investigation but announced in August 2010 that it would not make public the results of its probe. The reason for this appears to have been political. Russia has a stake in North Korea, a 12 mile border with a rail link across the Tumen River. Some have argued that the Russians held back the report to avoid embarrassing South Korea as it purportedly challenged the JIG findings. But one can also argue the opposite: to avoid embarrassing North Korea as it agreed with the JIG report. We may never know the truth, but what we do know is that the Russian position is one of hedging, not explicitly blaming the North while implying other causes of the sinking. See also Bechtol, “The Implications of the Cheonan Sinking,” p. 28.
41 KT, 9 Sep 2010.
42 KT, 2 Nov 2010.
43 Aidan Foster-Carter, “How North Korea was lost to China,” Asia Times, 16 Sep 2010, p. 4.
44 Aidan Foster-Carter, “China Help With North Korea? Fuggedaboutit!” Foreign Policy, 26 Nov 2010, p. 4.
45 Foster Carter, “How North Korea war lost to China,” p. 3.
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