Preface and Acknowledgements for Millennial North Korea

Preface and Acknowledgments

The world is at a critical juncture, caught up in the rapid digital transformation forcibly brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgence of major global conflicts on multiple fronts. The arrival of COVID-19 was a catalyst for change at an unprecedented scale, pushing the whole world to make a radical leap forward into a noncontact mode of communication. In North Korea, as early as March 2020, news reports surfaced of the use of virtual meetings by the Central Emergency Prevention Command (Bisang bang-yeok ji-hwi-bu) to confer with local branches.¹ Nothing in the contemporary world has been analogous to the lockdown situation—a moment that dove deeply into the unknown abyss of imperiled lives, livelihoods, and face-to-face human interactions. New algorithms of sociality and commerce have been created as a result, forcing the world to be ever more connected while lacking physical contact.

Barely out of the worst impacts of the pandemic, armed conflicts erupted in Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East. On all military fronts, North Korea is cited as a possible supplier of weapons. Although North Korea is not a direct participant, its association with these wars certainly increases the risks for the nation, which is already enduring a perilous existence under heavy sanctions.

Writing a preface to a book titled Millennial North Korea at the dawn of 2024 is an exercise that is both hopeful and ominous. A sense of tribulation overtakes me as I contemplate how ordinary folks have been persevering through unending hardship. The depth of economic hardship they have experienced must have been compounded by ruptures in trade with China during the pandemic, and as the nation has already been under unfathomable duress, the current moment could destabilize social structures. But for many decades, has North Korea not already been living in the kind of extraordinary isolation that suddenly besieged the world in early 2020?

This book is a humble testament to the precarity of North Korean millennial lives, which are mostly marked by suffering and resilience. It is a pale outcome considering the rich array of resources, helping hands, and moral support it has received. In addition to the Association for Asian Studies travel grant and UCLA’s faculty research grant, the Academy of Korean Studies grant (AKS-2015-LAB-2250002) generously supported my writing time and provided an opportunity to interact with the members of the research team; Youngmin Choe, Chris Hanscom, David Kang, and Akira Lippit have been helpful throughout the entire process. I am particularly grateful to Gloria Koo and Erma Acebo, who administered the grant with such ease and grace so that I could fully devote myself to research and writing.

My ongoing fascination with how societies shape-shift as a result of media technology was harnessed during the 2018 Technology in East Asian Performance Conference co-organized by the Yannai Initiative and the Center for Performance Studies at UCLA. The presentations I attended influenced the way I have come to think about technology in Asia. Satoko Shimazaki and Michael Emmerich, the conference co-organizers and longtime friends, should take full credit for this. The intellectual community at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television has been instrumental for this project. My thanks go to Jeff Burke, Michelle Liu Carriger, Felipe Cervera, Shelleen Greene, Brian Kite, Sean Metzger, Sylvan Oswald, Marike Splint, Dominic Taylor, Jasmine Trice, and Amy Villarejo.

Over the years, the National Intelligence Council, the National Committee on North Korea, the Korea Institute for National Unification, the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, the University of Bologna, the University of Sheffield, Goethe-Universität, Yonsei University, Seoul National University, George Washington University, Central Washington University, St. Olaf College, Rutgers University, Arizona State University, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Hawaii, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University kindly invited me to share portions of my research. Miseong Woo, Stephanie Montgomery, Andrew Yeo, Scott Snyder, Jisoo Kim, Emmanuel Kim, Young-a Park, Cheehyung Harrison Kim, Sookja Cho, William Hedberg, Ana Hedberg Olenina, Lucas Klein, Nicholas Williams, Antonio Fiori, Marco Milani, Chong-Eun Ahn, Volha Isakava, Michael Johnson, Weijie Song, Jae Hwan Lim, Tarryn Chun, Jyana Browne, Van Tran Nguyen, James Harding, Emily Wilcox, Se-Mi Oh, Rossella Ferrari, Gabor Sebo, Douglas Gabriel, Carter Eckart, Sunjoo Kim, and Alexander Zahlten have given me insightful feedback, enriching my limited perspective on the subject.

I am always in debt to Leslie Kriesel, my longtime editor, who has worked on most of my publications. Sophia Weltman’s assistance with research and final manuscript preparation was crucial for completing this book. This is the second time I am publishing with the Stanford University Press. I thank its talented designers, publicity team, and Laura J. Vollmer, who gave a final editorial touch to the book. Dylan Kyung-lim White never lost faith in this project, for which I will always be grateful.

As an emerging scholar in my early twenties, I had the fortune of having Professor Seog Youngjoong as my mentor; she not only taught me the enduring joy of research but also showed me a way of life dedicated to creating something meaningful that will survive the test of time.

Colleagues and mentors across various fields—Heather Nathans, Catherine Cole, Elizabeth Son, Kimberly Jannarone, Sarah Bay-Cheng, Tim Tangherlini, Rey Chow, Carlos Rojas, Peggy Phelan, Andrea Goldman, Eng-Beng Lim, Elise Morrison, Tobie Meyer-Fong, Namhee Lee, Theodore Jun Yoo, Charles Kim, Choi Kyeong-Hee, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Ariel Fox, Melissa Van Wyk, Roald Maliangkay, Ruth Barraclough, Oh Youjeong, Yoo Hyunjoon, Joo Young-Ha, Kwon Bodeurae, Lee HeeJin, Yassi Jahanmir, Zachary Price, So-Rim Lee, Stephanie Choi, Kwon Hye Kyoung, Lee Wonseok, Shea Hwang, Edward Kang, Liana Chen, Katherine Lee, Laure Murat, Laurie Hart, James Person, Greg Brazinsky, Nick Bonner, and Lee Mukyung—provided me with enduring moral support.

But what would the long journey of writing a book be without friends? I enjoy lasting friendships with Karie and Clarice Dreyer, Leo Cabranes-Grant, Dan Jaffe, Diana Salvador, Ron and Susan Egan, Lily and Francesco Bullo, Rachel and Everett Lipman, Elaine Ho, Calvin Wright, Alexa and Basile Joubin, Lesya Kalynska, T. J. Collins, Elena Zotova, Leonid Trofimov, Carolyn Glassman, Josh Tanzer, Alex Burry, Bishnupriya Ghosh, and Bhaskar Sarkar, who enrich my mind and add layered perspectives to the work I do.

Needless to say, without family members’ love, there would not be a rock on which the book could stand: Beverly, John, Tanya, Max, John Sr., Abby, Mee-Young, Young-Man, Young-Eun, Seonghee, Ho-yeon, Eun-jae, and my parents provide me with an unfaltering sense of embeddedness and continuity. Miles and Naima, my high-spirited children, light up every moment of my existence. The remarkably wise and inspiring Michael Berry shows me how to face the everyday challenges of being a parent-scholar. I have learned from you that there is a graceful way to accomplish these two most important missions in life. My two nieces, Dongjoo Yoo and Dongjin Yoo, collectively known as DJs in our family, present bright visions of the future. Seeing their kindness, beauty, and accomplishments makes me feel proud and hopeful.

The lived experiences of North Koreans themselves have been the true guiding light to glimpse millennial North Korea. Park Eunhee (Bak Eunhui), Son Myung-hui, Jung Kwang-il, Na Min-hui, and others who did not want their names revealed told me their stories. Your generosity is what inspired life into this book. I am deeply in debt to Sandra Fahy, James Hoare, Joanna Hosaniak, Jisoon Lee, and Henry Song for helping me rekindle my connections to the North Korean resettler community. Kim Yonho’s, Nat Kretchun’s, and Jane Kim’s reports on recent North Korean communication technology were foundational to provide much-needed context. Gang Jin-gyu, the force behind the news portal NKEconomy.com, is a true trailblazer, updating the world on a daily basis about North Korea’s technological advancement. Thanks to your pioneering work, this book is able to address a few technological interventions made by twenty-first-century North Korea.

Due to the pandemic, it was difficult to travel to interview North Korean resettlers, as I had originally intended. For this reason, most of the primary sources gathered here emerged from preexisting online interviews produced by YouTube channels such as Baena TV and individual channels run by North Korean resettlers themselves. I thank these media outlets for accumulating so many invaluable testimonies. I am humbled by the enormous work they have put into creating living archives; these accounts would have disappeared into oblivion without their intervention.

Books are, in many ways, inevitable revelations of impossibilities—the impossibilities of knowing the past, the present, and the future. They blow in the winds of time like specks of dust floating in space to unknown destinations. From our limited vantage point at present, the pathways forward seem to lead to a hollow cavern at best, and looking back into this book from the future will inescapably reveal the limitations of my perspectives. But hopefully, this work will be remembered as a sincere attempt to present an attentive portrayal of the very confusing first two decades of our new millennium.

Notes

1. North Korea ICT Research Committee [Buk-han ICT yeon-gu wi-won-hoe], 2020 Survey on North Korean ICT Trends: Focus on North Korean Media [Buk-han ICT dong-hyang josa 2020: Buk-han maeche-reul jung-sim-eu-ro] (Seoul: Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, 2021), 5.