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China and Conflict on the Korean Peninsula: The Return of the Great Powers...
On July 3, I’ll be giving a paper at a conference of historians and policy makers at the University of Leeds on a subject near and dear to the hearts of many readers. The abstract follows: The Korean...
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Awful Art, Torn Visas, and Reality: Comment on the Matthew Miller Affair
With respect to Matthew Miller, the American tourist who tore up his visa upon arrival in Pyongyang in April, was promptly arrested, paraded out as an effective hostage, and recently tried in a North...
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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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What does Kim Jong-un think of ‘The Interview’? Ask the NDC
Kim Jong-un is the head of the National Defence Commission (NDC), which is functionally the top organ of state power in North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). While no small debate...
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Samantha Power at the Security Council, and North Korea’s ‘Sham Report’ on...
While “The Interview” sideshow has in some ways become the main media event of the past weeks, the DPRK remains very much center stage at the United Nations. North Korean human rights were discussed...
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Notes on the Sinchon Massacre
The death of North Korean civilians at Sinchon is significant on a few levels. On the one hand, it calls our attention to the always fractious topic of war crimes in Korea, and the contested nature of...
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Full Comment on Women Across the DMZ March
As observers of current events on the Korean peninsula will be aware, a group of peace activists is presently in North Korea and will be crossing the DMZ tomorrow, from Kaesong, into the South. Their...
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North Korean Purges and Scuttlebutt
A few days after publishing a 2500-word analysis of the Hyon Yong-chol purge aftermath (an abbreviated version of which was published by the Guardian), I spoke with Steve Miller of the Asia News Weekly...
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Occupying North Korea, Witnessing Massacre? Military Sources and the Question...
The North Korean state claims that US troops arrived in Sinchon, Hwanghae province, on 17 October 1950 and promptly began butchering civilians, culminating in over 35,000 dead by the time of their...
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Preparing for Doomsday, or October 10, in North Korea
North Korean state media has begun to really ramp up the name-calling at South Korea again. In response to South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s complaint that the ROK was not consulted about the...
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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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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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North Korean Human Rights: Rex Tillerson as Blank Slate
Will the Trump administration maintain and extend US pressure on North Korea on the human rights front? Will the Executive Branch aim to extend and intensify US criticism of and dialogue with Chinese...
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Comment on the North Korean Missile Launch
I was on BBC television this evening (via the Leeds studio) discussing the North Korean missile launch with Celia Hatton, who, fortunately for me and the BBC, is a veteran ‘China hand’ with years of...
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Reflections on the History of Chinese-North Korean Relations, and US-DPRK...
Sometimes we need to modify the questions we ask. The question “Is the Chinese Communist Party going to cut off North Korea?” results in a fairly predictable string of analyses — usually adding up to...
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Napalm and Invasion: North Korean War Memory and British Sources
In a recent post on his black-and-white personal blog, the North Korea scholar B.R. Myers criticizes a recent ream of journalistic think pieces about the function of Korean War memory in the DPRK. The...
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Writings and Media Work: July 2017
For whatever reason, July has been a particularly active month in the various cockpits where I do my work — coffee shops, trains rocketing between Leeds and London, my university office, and British...
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North Korea as Cinematic Enemy: Donald Trump and ‘Olympus has Fallen’
I’m a historian of contemporary Northeast Asia, which means that narratives having to do with the Cold War or with peace and war in the region today interest me, even when they’re awful. In 2013, I...
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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...
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