Yongusil 69: Ruptures, Rememberings and the Ruhrgebiet: A Restive AKSE in Bochum

By | July 15, 2015 | No Comments

The biannual gathering of the Association of Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE)  is perhaps the pre-eminent gathering of Koreanists in Europe. Once in the renowned hands of legendary scholars such as Werner Sasse and Martina Deuchler, this very serious forum for academic exchange now resides in the eminently capable, careful grip of James Lewis at the University of Oxford. Nevertheless, AKSE’s heart continues to beat east of the Rhein, and 2015’s outing returned for the third time to the metronomic heart of Korean Studies in Germany: the ‘Autobahn’ Ruhr Universitat Bochum.

Putting aside the unexpectedly resistive moments in the AKSE Council meeting during which discussion of academic freedom and the independence of Korean studies in Europe was led by an impassioned Remco Breuker of Leiden University, the academic output of this conference does not seem to have suffered either from the unwelcome hand of the Seoul government nor the arbitrary fury of the former ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the Netherlands (surely not a diplomatic posting likely to push a career civil servant to any state of upset). Sino-NK readers would have been overwhelmed by the epistemic delectation, much of which would likely not have been to the taste of anyone in the pay of President Park Geun-hye.

This conference surely saw a step change in the quality of analysis focused on North Korea. From the esteemed Koen De Ceuster’s holistic, empathic and emotional consideration of its artistic output, Shine Choi’s deep and challenging reconfiguration of the acts and processes of our seeing and encounters of its places and productions, Marsha Haufler’s wonderfully considered analysis of its production of mosaic representation, and Valerie Gelezeau’s frankly unique theoretical and conceptual exploration of the nature of fieldwork practice in the terrains and territoires under Pyongyang’s sovereignty, time was called on the age of the gentleman amateur. No more is it enough for us to pretend that we can simply bring our post-colonial, gendered, privileged gaze and voyeuristic, hubristic imaginations to bear on North Korea and its people or politics and assert that we have truly seen. Our encounters and interactions as professional scholars and epistemic communities must be rooted in theory and methodology as much as they might be grounded in some form of reality.

AKSE 2015 saw that most intriguingly in the cultural field, with Benjamin Joinau’s masterful work beginning to connect the spaces of topography and landscape and cultural production, examining North Korean cinematic production for more than simply its curiousness or ideological content. Tatiana Gabroussenko’s gastronomic re-emergence and another tour de force from the nexus of Koreanologie and Francophonie courtesy of Benoit Berthelier, which sought to extend his important considerations of the spaces and places of cultural production in the early life of North Korea, doing so by encountering the physical terrain of the Propaganda Houses in which both class identity and cultural practice were formed between 1945 and 1955.

All of this truly fantastic work notwithstanding, the highlight for this author, and surely for many other attendees, was a panel which really can lay claim to the designation, ‘landmark’. One of the most extensive moments of North Korean cultural and leisure production came in response to Seoul winning the 1988 Summer Olympics (and the failure of Pyongyang’s effort to arrange a co-hosting); the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) in the summer of 1989. A long running institution in the socialist and non-aligned world, the WFYS began very soon after the end of the Second World War. As recently been seen here on Sino-NK, in Pyongyang it became a key crystallization of leisure and sporting imperatives in the institutional history of the DPRK, one whose architectural legacy can still be seen there. This author was an attendee at 2012’s London Olympics (had a fine time at the Team Show-jumping), a similar moment of institutional and sporting connection and that particular event will live long in the cultural memory of its many thousands of visitors.

AKSE 2015 was extraordinarily privileged to play host to a gathering of cultural and narrative/textual memory of 1989 in Pyongyang. Through an investigation of the narratives of pan-Korean aspiration and their manifestation in the person of the infamous ‘flower of unification’ Yim Su-gyong by the authoritative Andrei Lankov, and Csoma Mozes of ELTE University, Budapest’s examination of the textual record left behind after Hungary’s troubled interaction with the WFYS at its moment of opening up at the very cusp of European socialism’s collapse, North Korea’s moment in the sporting, youthful sun was contextualised in ways that this author had never previously encountered. Uniquely, the panel also included papers from St Petersburg State University’s expert in North Korean textuality and ideology, Sergei Kurbanov, and Sonja Haeussler of the University of Stockholm. The two gave extraordinary accounts of moments of disco-fuelled optimism and youthful interaction, Haeussler from her position as a translator for the GDR delegation and Kurbanov as part of a technical exchange to one of Pyongyang’s Vinalon production units and someone who, it seems, kept a now-published and seemingly essential diary (though only in Russian) of his time there.

This brilliantly presented panel will live long in the memory of those who attended, a rare moment in which the reality of a moment historically recorded in Pyongyang narratives came vividly and cogently alive. While it cannot be said that the entirety of AKSE 2015’s programme was as exciting or extraordinary, this panel in particular will ensure it lingers in minds for years to come.

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