Media Studies

On Reading North Korean Media: The Curse of the Web

By | October 31, 2016

In the first of a series based on evidence from more than two years spent mapping North Korean online media, Martin Weiser highlights patterns in how North Korean organizations operate and how human error and unchecked individual inputs can shape what we come to read.

THAAD and the Politicization of Missile Defense in South Korea

By | July 29, 2016

THAAD is a hot issue in South Korea today. There is conflict over the safety of the system, as well as popular anger at the government’s failure to consult the public at either the local or national level prior to announcing THAAD deployment. This has reinvigorated concerns over the relationship between democracy and the core tenets of the US-ROK alliance. Darcie Draudt investigates.

Rhetoric vs Reality: 5.24 and North Korean Workers in Dandong

By | December 03, 2015

In response to sanctions on South Korean business and Pyongyang’s will to export more labor, the focus of inter-Korean exchange has shifted to the city of Dandong, “another Kaesong Industrial Complex,” according to anthropologist Kang Ju-won. Christopher Green looks at Kang’s recent article on Pressian.

Cold Comfort for the Women: Japanese Military Culture and Local Collaboration

By | October 12, 2015

Finding new pathways through the disputes over Japanese-Korean history is delicate work. Mary Finch, in a guest essay, looks at fraught questions of collaboration, ideology, and the comfort women.

2nd Miracle on the Han: Mass Media Unites over History by Ministerial Fiat

By | October 09, 2015

The South Korean mass media rarely unites in condemnation of a domestic policy, but controversial and deeply flawed plans to “re-nationalize” the production of secondary school history textbooks made it happen. Christopher Green investigates.