<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">Dear List colleagues, 19 April, 2004 <BR>
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I just came across - belatedly; it's been up since February - a newish website on North Korea, which looks very useful. This is NKZone, run by Rebecca Mackinnon, formerly of CNN. It's at: http://nkzone.typepad.com/<BR>
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This admirably complements existing English-language resources for following events and issues regarding the DPRK - such as PyongyangSquare, Nautilus, and CanKor - which I imagine are known already to most List members who follow North Korea.<BR>
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Besides sending you (if you sign up) daily updates and alerts - today they had photos of Kim Jong-il's limo in Beijing, already - NKZone has a wealth of links to other sites; some of which, again, were new to me (perhaps I'm the last to know). These include:<BR>
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" An occasional diary of expatriate life in Pyongyang, by a German-Dutch couple:<BR>
http://www.phphosting.nl/zofona/nkverhaal_en.php<BR>
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" Video feeds of DPRK television news, from a Japanese site, www.elufa.net<BR>
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" A long list - albeit far from complete: their name is legion - of new and recent books on North Korea, with links to Amazon;<BR>
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" Assorted "bloggers": all opinionated, some interesting. NKZone classes itself too as a blog, and so encourages feedback and debate, commendably.<BR>
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Among much else on this splendid site, could I also draw attention to an interview with Hazel Smith. On the basis of extensive field visits over the past decade, Professor Smith propounds an original and (in my view) cogent account of the radical social changes affecting daily life in the DPRK since the mid-1990s famine, and their impications. See:<BR>
http://nkzone.typepad.com/nkzone/2004/02/hazel_smith_a_v.html<BR>
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Amid endless chasing our tails over the nuclear issue, I think we tend to ignore this vital level of grassroots analysis. More sociology, less IR! But of course I'm biased.<BR>
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Best wishes to one and all,<BR>
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Aidan FC<BR>
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AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER<BR>
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University <BR>
17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK <BR>
tel: +44(0) 1274 588586 mobile: +44(0) 7970 741307 <BR>
fax: +44(0) 1274 773663 ISDN: +44(0) 1274 589280<BR>
Email: afostercarter@aol.com website: www.aidanfc.net<BR>
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