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In Germany, ROK President Park Geun-hye Talks Reunification and a Possible...
After unification, will Korean teens in Seoul enjoy a fashionably retro museum of North Korean material and cultural life, as this young German is doing at a Berlin exhibition on the former East...
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Some North Korea Commentary
My comments about North Korean foreign policy were carried in the last couple of days in The Diplomat and the Wall Street Journal‘s “Korea Real Time” blog. The interview at the former outlet is the...
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Hong Kong, the UK, and Occupy Central
I spoke this evening to Phil Williams of BBC 5 Live about the protests in Hong Kong. While my brain was more than a bit muddled after a very full day of university lecturing (the first proper day of...
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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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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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Angela Merkel and Japan’s Wartime Past
The German Chancellor was in Tokyo for a couple of eventful days. Although Merkel sees Abe Shinzo regularly, she noted before leaving that she has not been to Japan, the country that she tactfully...
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Old Chapters, New Chapters: The Memory Wars in East Asia
From the very beginning of the so-called ‘post war,’ the territorial and temporal parameters of the memory wars between China and Japan were never drawn particularly cleanly. The war ended formally in...
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On Northern Ireland and Hong Kong
Telling the story of Hong Kong from 1840-now, Northern Ireland — or the six counties of Ulster — may seem an odd place to begin. What, after all, could be further away from Hong Kong’s density, its...
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From Hyesan to London: Hyeonseo Lee and the New North Korea Defector Memoir
Hyeonseo Lee has produced an excellent memoir, a text which, along with John Sweeney and Emma Graham-Harrison, I will be discussing with her at an event organized by The Guardian in London tomorrow...
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Will China Disintegrate? A British Assessment in 1947
On either side of an energizing North Korea public event I did this past Friday in London, I make two treks out to the UK’s National Archives in Kew Gardens. My goal was explore Foreign Office papers...
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Journalist Expulsions and Beijing’s Counterterrorism Narrative
2015 was supposedly a triumphant year for the Chinese Communist Party, but the CCP seemed determined to end the year on a landslide of insecurity with respect to the foreign journalists within its...
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Questioning North Korea’s Narrative of the London Diplomat Defection
It took about three days for the North Korean state to put together the opening salvo to its official public response to the stunning defection of Thae Yong-ho from its Embassy in London, but it has...
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Britain’s Global Cold War: Publications by Alexander Nicholas Shaw
One of the nice things about my job is that I get to work with some the most talented young historians in the field today. Alexander Shaw is one of those working and publishing in international...
View ArticleDocuments on Crown Prince Hirohito’s visit to the United Kingdom in 1921
Historian Herbert Bix describes Hirohito’s long voyage to the United Kingdom in 1921 as a number of things: it was a test of the court and the conservatives in Tokyo (some factions did not want him to...
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