In the years since the death of Kim Jong-il and the formal acknowledgement of Kim Jong-un as head of state, the North Korean regime has made a series of moves to further augment and consolidate the ideological foundations of Kimism and cement the young leader's legitimacy. Historical narratives have played a critical, if often unnoticed, role in this process. This book seeks to chronicle these historical changes and continuities. Continuity and Change in North Korean Politics explores the stable and shifting political, cultural and economic landscapes of North Korea in the era of Kim Jong-un. The contributors deploy a variety of methodologies of analysis focused on the content, narratives and discourses of politics under Kim Jong-un, tracing its historical roots and contemporary practical and conceptual manifestations. Moving beyond most analyses of North Korea's political and institutional ideologies, the book explores uncharted spaces of social and cultural relations, including children's literature, fisheries, grassland reclamation, commemorative culture, and gender. By examining critical moments of change and continuity in the country's past, it builds a holistic analysis of national politics as it is currently deployed and experienced. Demonstrating how historical, political and cultural narratives continue to be adapted to suit new and challenging circumstances, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Korean Politics and Asian Studies.

In the years since the death of Kim Jong-il and the formal acknowledgement of Kim Jong-un as head of state, the North Korean regime has made a series of moves to further augment and consolidate the ideological foundations of Kimism and cement the young leader's legitimacy. Historical narratives have played a critical, if often unnoticed, role in this process. This book seeks to chronicle these historical changes and continuities. Continuity and Change in North Korean Politics explores the stable and shifting political, cultural and economic landscapes of North Korea in the era of Kim Jong-un. The contributors deploy a variety of methodologies of analysis focused on the content, narratives and discourses of politics under Kim Jong-un, tracing its historical roots and contemporary practical and conceptual manifestations. Moving beyond most analyses of North Korea's political and institutional ideologies, the book explores uncharted spaces of social and cultural relations, including children's literature, fisheries, grassland reclamation, commemorative culture, and gender. By examining critical moments of change and continuity in the country's past, it builds a holistic analysis of national politics as it is currently deployed and experienced. Demonstrating how historical, political and cultural narratives continue to be adapted to suit new and challenging circumstances, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Korean Politics and Asian Studies.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese-North Korean border region has undergone a gradual transformation into a site of intensified cooperation, competition, and intrigue. These changes have prompted a significant volume of critical scholarship and media commentary across multiple languages and disciplines. Drawing on existing studies and new data, Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands brings much of this literature into concert by pulling together a wide range of insight on the region's economics, security, social cohesion, and information flows. Drawing from multilingual sources and transnational scholarship, this volume is enhanced by the extensive fieldwork undertaken by the editors and contributors in their quests to decode the borderland. In doing so, the volume emphasizes the link between theory, methodology, and practice in the field of Area Studies and social science more broadly.