KEI Live

Much has been discussed about the power of outside information to open the eyes of the North Korean people and convince them of the truth about the outside world. Some high-profile defectors have even cited American movies and South Korean dramas as catalysts that pushed them to defect - Park Yeon Mi famously credited the movie Titanic with her moment of realization. But is this kind of information campaign really enough to change North Korea from within?

 

Jieun Baek's new book - North Korea's Hidden Revolution - focuses on this exact question. In this episode, Korean Kontext host Jenna Gibson sits down with Baek, who is currently a Ph.D candidate at Oxford Universtiy, to discuss how information has changed North Korean society already - and the limits to what it can accomplish. 

 

Photo from comradeanatolii’s photostream on flickr Creative Commons.

In 2013, China announced its One Belt, One Road project, an ambitious attempt to recreate some of the economic networks that once bridged Europe and Asia through the Silk Road. Around the same time, South Korea announced its vision for regional cooperation, the Eurasia Initiative.

 

What do these two plans have in common? Are the bound to clash? And how realistic are their goals to connect East Asia to Europe, the Middle East, and even Africa? Dr. Balbina Hwang, visiting professor at Georgetown University, digs into the two projects and Korea's place in regional integration.

Since the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 there have been numerous predictions that the collapse of the North Korean political system would be imminent, yet the Kim dynasty continues to rule. In his paper for KEI, Dr. Wang Son Taek argues that the reason we have been so wrong about North Korea's stability is that we need to treat Kim Jong Un more like a monarch than a charismatic leader.

 

In this episode, Korean Kontext host Jenna Gibson sits down with Dr. Wang to discuss his theory on the legitimacy structure of North Korea's leadership, and what this paradigm shift could mean for how we deal with the reclusive regime.

In February 2014, the United Nations' special Commission of Inquiry on on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched their report, laying out more than 400 pages of evidence that the regime in Pyongyang was engaged in a variety of human rights violations against their own people. About a year later, the UN opened a new office in Seoul dedicated to continuing the documentation of human rights concerns in the DPRK.

 

In this episode, Korean Kontext host Jenna Gibson speaks with Signe Poulsen, head of this new UN human rights office in Seoul. They discuss the human rights situation, the work that the UN is doing to document human rights concerns taking place in the DPRK, and what accountability could mean in the future.

Starting from the period after the Korean War and continuing today, more than 100,000 Korean children were adopted around the world. As they get older, many of them decide to conduct a search for their birth families in Korea, beginning what often turns out to be a long, difficult and emotional process for all involved.

 

Today's guest, Katelyn Hemmeke, is currently in Seoul as a Fulbright researcher, speaking to adoptees about their experiences conducting a birth family search. She has found that it's often incredibly difficult to find information that can help track down birth families, and that even when a search is successful, the emotional journey is not over. Learn more about the challenges adoptees face when they decide to conduct a birth family search in this week's episode of Korean Kontext.

 

Photo taken by Andrew Le.

Much has been said about the power of outside information - news, weather, and even soap operas - to influence the North Korean public. But a new report takes a different angle on a possible information campaign toward the North.

 

In this new report, North Korea watcher Skip Vincenzo lays out a strategy that would target the North Korean elites and those close to Pyongyang's center of gravity, with the hopes of de-escalating a major crisis. The idea would be to give those elites hope of a life after Kim, encouraging them to lay down arms were an emergency scenario to occur.

 

Skip joined Korean Kontext host Jenna Gibson for a chat about his report and the information strategy that he proposes, as well as some of the ways it could fit in with what we are already doing to address the North Korean threat.

 

Please click here to learn more and view the report.

 

Image from Will De Freitas' photostream on flickr Creative Commons.

Growing up in Tennessee and Alabama, Dr. David Oh never imagined he would one day be leading a mission to explore a metallic asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. But as project systems engineer for NASA's Psyche mission and former lead flight director for the Curiousity Mars rover, Dr. Oh has done plenty of extraterrestrial exploring.

 

Listen to this episode to learn more about these missions, how Dr. Oh sees his Korean-American identity, and what it's like to put your whole family on Mars time.

 

This is the first of our interviews with the three Korean American Day honorees for 2017, all of whom are doing awesome things in the fields of science and technology. Below are some of our previous Korean Kontext interviews with Korean American Day honorees.

 

Korean American Day 2016: Chef Edward Lee

Korean American Day 2015: Olympic Skier Toby Dawson

Actor Daniel Dae Kim

 

In 2017, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) will complete the move of thousands of troops and support staff from Yongsan Garrison in Seoul to Camp Humphries, 50 miles south of the capital city. This project has taken over a decade to complete, partially because it involved building and rennovating infrastructure for the thousands of troops and their families that will be moving there.

 

Korean Kontext host Jenna Gibson sat down with Major General James Walton, Director for Transformation and Restationing, who has headed up this relocation project since 2014. They discuss the background of the move and its progress, as well as the future for the land in Yongsan that will be vacated by USFK.

For the first Korean Kontext podcast of 2017, five members of the KEI staff sat down with host Jenna Gibson for a chat about the volitility of 2016 and what it could mean for the year ahead. They discuss the surprising election of Donald Trump and how his administration is shaping their policy toward Korea, what the political turmoil in Seoul could mean for U.S.-Korea relations, and even how Korean culture will continue to gain popularity.

 

For more insights and predictions, check out the two blogs that accompany this discussion: The Year of the Unexpected: A Look Back At the Korean Peninsula in 2016 and 10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula in 2017.

The last several rounds of UN sanctions against the DPRK have been called the "strongest ever," and the new sanctions passed on November 30 are no different. There are some new provisions, such as a specific cap on coal exports and a strengthened ability to deter other countries from cooperating with the North on illicit activities. But are these sanctions finally enough to change North Korea's calculus and get them back to the negotiating table?

 

Here to talk about this is renouned North Korea expert Dr. Stephan Haggard. He sat down with KEI senior director Troy Stangarone after the new sanctions were passed to discuss how they are different, and what affect they may have on the North Korean regime.

 

Image from blake.thornberry's photostream on flickr Creative Commons.