Korean studies scholars lecture on North Korea
By Jon Dunbar
Now that the spring semester is finished, university students and professors alike are setting out for vacations. Yet more are coming to Korea, filling their places in lecture halls for summer semester programs at universities here. The Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch (RASKB) is taking advantage of the increase in seasonal visitors by offering an extra busy schedule of lectures and events this month.
Andray Abrahamian, author of the newly released book “North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths,” will give a talk this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerset Palace in downtown Seoul. The lecture is open for all. Non-members pay 10,000 won and students pay 5,000 won. Any lecture about North Korea tends to attract a large crowd, so everyone is recommended to arrive early. Abrahamian has visited North Korea 30 times while working for the nonprofit Chosun Exchange, and also lived and worked in Myanmar. He compares the two countries, both considered the region's most militarized and repressed, and analyzes how Myanmar was able to find a path out of isolation but North Korea has not.
Next Monday, the RASKB and Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient present the Seoul Colloquium in Korean Studies at Korea University's Asiatic Research Institute for two presentations related to North Korea.
Marie-Orange Rive-Lasan, associate professor of Paris Diderot University, will talk on preparations for historical fieldwork in Pyongyang. She focuses on the North Korean capital's “sites of memory” (lieux de memoire), or places with historical significance in collective memory, such as buildings, symbols, even colors that present a coherent national memory.
Evelyne Cherel, an associate professor from the University of La Rochelle, will present on South Korean religious institutes as an interface between the two Koreas. She'll look at the historic relationship between the South's Catholic Church and the North's state, which has evolved from antagonistic to collaborative.
Everyone interested in Korean studies is welcome to this free event, which starts at 6 p.m.
Despite the optimism of inter-Korean progress, this will also be the final colloquium for RASKB council members Kathryn Weathersby and Boudewijn Walraven. Weathersby, who has been at Korea University, will return to America, and Walraven, who's been at Sungkyunkwan University's Academy of East Asian Studies, goes back to the Netherlands.
Later this month, the RASKB will hold two more lectures at the Somerset. On July 18, historian David Shuster will lecture on the sexual discourses of North Korea, which has sought to conflate sexual immortality with political disloyalty and encourages a naive form of sexuality. Shuster earned his MA and Ph.D. from Harvard in modern Korean history, and spent a semester at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang.
And on July 24, Korea Times contributor Miliann Kang will lecture on the challenges confronting working mothers in South Korea. Kang is in Korea as a Fulbright senior research scholar investigating gender, work and family issues for Korean working moms.
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