North Korea might be known as the world’s most secluded society, but it has witnessed the rapid rise of media technologies in the new millennium. While the North Korean state is anxiously trying to catch up with the world standard of communication technology, it is also faced with the need to block free influx of outside information by allowing only intranet to its people. In a country where smuggling foreign media still can be punished by public execution, how do North Koreans manage to access outside information? This project explores how the expansion of new media technology complicates the country’s seemingly monolithic facade mired in entangled networks of technology and surveillance, intellectual property and copyrights, and the way for millennials to live creatively with censorship. This discussion will be chaired by Alexander Zahlten, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University.
Speaker
Suk-Young Kim, Professor of Theater and Performance Studies; Director of the Center for Performance Studies, UCLA