Essays
Defector Testimonies in a Polarized Society: From Implausible Story to Political Controversy
Nothing looms larger in the rear view mirror of South Korea’s democratic legacy than the South Jeolla Province city of Gwangju and the events that took place there in May 1980. That same democratization narrative was again abused in May 2013, this time along with some defector testimony of a most curious disposition.
Leader as Teacher, Leader as Scribe: An Introduction to North Korean Children’s Literature
Christopher Richardson follows up on Sino-NK’s critically acclaimed “Benoit Symposium” with an exclusive essay on the challenge of children’s literary cultural production, focusing primarily on the classic text, “A Winged Horse.”
Benoit Symposium: Capitalist Dreams in the Communist Utopia: North Korea’s The Schoolgirl’s Diary
Engaging with a contemporary North Korean film, Sherri Ter Molen unpacks the usage of symbols derived from foreign–and what are often seen as hostile–sources within a distinctly North Korean cultural product.
Benoit Symposium: Writers in the DPRK: The Invisible Stars
The author of “Soldiers on the Cultural Front,” Tatiana Gabroussenko analyses the conundrum of literary production in North Korea, a cultural space seemingly reverential of the product but deliberately ambivalent, if not actively hostile, towards the producer.
Benoit Symposium: From Pyongyang to Mars: Sci-fi, Genre, and Literary Value in North Korea
History and the past are subjects close to North Korea’s institutional and cultural heart, but what about cultural expressions of the potential future. In this essay, Benoit Berthelier explores the science fiction output of Pyongyang.
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