A common assumption is that North Korea is a "Hermit Kingdom" that froze in time some decades ago. There are certainly many things about North Korea that have persisted, including the all-encompassing personality cult, the brutal repression, and the pervasive fear. In the last six years, however, since Kim Jong Un came to power and predictions of imminent collapse immediately followed, North Korea has changed in significant ways.
In the course of her reporting on North Korea, Anna Fifield, the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award recipient, has watched a leader who is much bolder and more audacious than his father ever was. Sometimes that boldness comes out in executions of family members and launching of missiles. But recently, it has manifested itself as summit diplomacy with enemy leaders. Kim Jong Un is now trying to re-position himself as a responsible, if nuclear-armed, global leader. He has adeptly accelerated the nuclear program and allowed a class of nouveaux riches to flourish.
An often-overlooked fact about North Korea, reports Fifield, is that life there has been getting slightly better for many people, in relative terms. Over the last several years, she has been struck by the number of North Korean defectors she met who have escaped not because they were starving, but because they were disillusioned.
Why have these and other changes occurred in North Korea? And how does the current diplomatic engagement with the North present an opportunity for us to help the country’s transformation?
On this panel discussion, celebrating the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award, the award winner, Anna Fifield, the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post, will consider these and other questions, drawing on her long career in journalism covering Asia and focusing on North Korea.
Register here (by Monday, Nov 12): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/17th-annual-shorenstein-journalism-award-p…
Speakers
Anna Fifield, Beijing bureau chief, The Washington Post
Andray Abrahamian, 2018-19 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program, Stanford University Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Barbara Demick, New York correspondent of the Los Angeles Times
Yong Suk Lee (moderator), SK Center Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and Deputy Director, Korea Program, Stanford University Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center