ABSTRACT
Reading either North Korea’s deepest prehistory or turbulent present demonstrates the importance of maritime and coastal issues to its governmentality and development. Strong continuities in this sector exist not simply between periods of North Korea’s own history but on the peninsula generally. Note, for instance, the symmetry between the need for modernisation of Korea’s ports and portside infrastructure as articulated by the colonial-era Chosen Government General’s Annual Reports on Reforms and Progresses and the seemingly continual stream of reports of Kim Jong-un’s interest in fi shing and maritime developments published by North Korean state media in 2015. Kim Jong-un’s drive that North Korea’s developmental institutions generate “mountains and seas of gold” in his New Year’s address, therefore, was not entirely unique, although it was situated within a year whose major developmental milestones were pegged to national and party anniversaries. Whereas it was the mountains and their forests that seemed to dominate Pyongyang’s interest in the fi rst half of 2015, the second half found North Korea’s media outlets committing to print a huge variety of images of Kim Jong-un in the company of fi shermen, their institutional or political leaders and sundry and varied fi sh species.
