Today I am excited to launch North Lights, a new online journal about North(ern) Korea … its past, present, and future. North Lights will publish exciting new work and share links to the best global scholarship and writing about North Korea. We …
As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage populations worldwide — I write these words in November 2021 — the DPRK (North Korea) continues to insist that it has successfully maintained Covid Zero. As reports from Daily NK and other organisations …
By Christopher Richardson Reviewing a 2018 production of Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in New York City, Alexandra Schwartz observed that, “the play’s warning about an unimaginable future now feels like a bitter mockery of …
Irresistible Rise? Brecht’s V‑Effekt from The Threepenny Opera to Watchmen Read more »
Russian journalist Natalia Portyakova from Izvestia emailed this week to ask my thoughts about rumoured succession plans in North Korea. An extended version of my response: Kang Pan Sok, Kim Jong Suk, & Kim Yo Jong: Echoes of the Past …
Australian Children’s Laureate Morris Gleitzman recently told a packed audience in Sydney that everywhere he travels in Australia he hears young people express bewilderment that adults keep electing to high office men and women whose behaviour, should they – the …
Our Chosen Stories: Reflections on Four Years of Empire of the Waves Read more »
Note: This article is a brief overview of a wider research project I am undertaking on the life of Cyril Montague Birnie and the history of Australia-Japan relations. I welcome any contacts from those with direct or indirect knowledge of …
Recently I passed my ten year anniversary on Facebook and five year anniversary on Twitter. Both sent notes to celebrate the milestone. At first, it felt a little strange to receive such affirmations from the algorithms of addiction. But soon …
On the 18th of June 2017, I was invited to speak at the St. James’ Institute in Sydney, alongside the Hon. Michael Kirby, Chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK. The St. James’ Institute …
Writing in the The New York Times, former North Korean counter-intelligence officer and poet Jang Jin-sung observed that his decision to flee the DPRK was precipitated by a realization “that there are two North Koreas: one real and the other a …
In 2013 I Co-Directed Panoptic Perspectives: Voices in Exile with Professor Kyungmook Kim, Dr Markus Bell, Dr Sohoon Lee, & Vanessa Danielsen at ANU, the University of Sydney, and Sydney Cheil Church (Concord). The festival explored North Korean propaganda, arts, …