How do North Koreans consume media and create their own viral narratives? By Professor Suk-Young Kim (UCLA)

About

We live in a hyper-networked world where joining online platforms and entering digital transactions play a pivotal role in spinning unique dynamics of today’s sociality. But what if our digital interface with the world is limited to few state-sanctioned platforms? What if the most significant transactions we make must take place offline, not online? This talk explores the unique case of millennial North Korea where the state is anxiously trying to catch up with the world standard of communication technology while also faced with the need to block free influx of outside information. In a country where smuggling foreign media still can be punished by public execution, how do North Koreans manage to access outside information? This presentation explores the way in which the expansion of new media technology complicates North Korea’s seemingly monolithic facade mired in entangled networks of technology and surveillance, intellectual property and copyrights, and the way millennials live with censorship and surveillance.

Suk-Young Kim is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television. She is the author of Illusive Utopia (http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=370207) :Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Michigan, 2010), DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (Columbia, 2014), K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance (Stanford, 2018), and Surviving Squid Game (Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2023). She also co-authored Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (Columbia, 2009) and edited Cambridge Companion to K-Pop (Cambridge, 2023). Her most recent book is titled Millennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance (Stanford, 2024). Her scholarship has been recognized by the James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, the Association for Theater in Higher Education Outstanding Book Award, ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship, and Guggenheim Fellowship. She was a visiting professor at Yonsei University, University of Bologna, and Arizona State University. She presently serves as a member of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and co-edits the Columbia University Press’ new book series ‘Critical Voices from East Asia.’ Her commentary on Korean politics and media have been featured in major media outlets, such as Billboard, CNN, NPR, NYT, WSJ, BBC and her opinion pieces have been published by the Los Angeles Times and NBC.

This talk is part of the Ra-Jong-yil Forum in Korean Studies.

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