[KS] spies and thrillers

Hyung Pai hyungpai at eastasian.ucsb.edu
Sat Mar 25 20:32:10 EST 2006 

Dear members,
I did not realize my innocent question would raise such a heated  
debate. I just wanted something short and relatively easy to assign  
to my students here who have only a vague idea of where or what NK  
is. I do agree that these thriller movies do not give at all a  
balanced perspective of the scope and complexity of the NK regime in  
all its surreal manifestations ( as Dr. Kim just mentioned about  
theatre/dance)
as well as real hardships and famine on the ground, however these  
movies have now become the  visual images being circulated around the  
world- be it fiction or fantasy. Therefore, I feel that we should  
address some of these issues even in a film class. Since I am not a  
cinema person, I am approaching these films from a cultural studies  
perspective in my course designing stage. I thank everyone who sent  
me insightful comments
On Mar 24, 2006, at 12:02 PM, Suk-Young Kim wrote:

>
> Hello all:
>
> I agree with Frank’s point 2. This is not to dismiss all the existing
> publications on North Korean crisis, but to acknowledge that there  
> is much more
> to North Korean scholarship beyond political and economic analyses.
>
> As a person currently working on a book on how the NK propaganda  
> theatre/film
> created discursive and unpredictable cultural practices of everyday  
> life, I
> come to realize that taking such a cultural approach to NK is a  
> pretty exciting
> way of understanding why and how NK sustains itself so firmly. But  
> at the same
> time, it is a
> tough mission to accomplish because one is doomed to rely heavily on
> ethnographic research skills. Interviewing defectors might yield to  
> incorrect
> or biased information, but at least, it is doable and is the only  
> way to
> understand everyday life practices in NK at the present moment. Many
> interesting books can be written on NK via ethnographic research,  
> and it will
> be nice to see more publications on NK culture counterbalancing the  
> current NK
> scholarship which leans heavily towards NK crisis.
>
> Suk-Young Kim
>
>
> Quoting Frank Hoffmann <frank at koreaweb.ws>:
>
>> Aidan, okay, thought it was clear ...
>>
>> Point 1:  FILM CLASS, that's a lecture/class about film. A film class
>> is about film, not history. Film is a new developing area of study
>> that is on the way of developing its own methodology, just like
>> sociology, history, psychology, etc. I was trying to point out that
>> teaching a FILM CLASS (class about film) as if it where a history
>> class with additional visual material (and that's what the question
>> aimed at) would be a very problematic approach. Interdisciplinary
>> teaching should not be mistaken for the same chicken soup all week.
>>
>> Point 2:  If I rely on the most stale and overused joke for the title
>> to my academic or journalistic informative book, do I ask to be taken
>> serious? And if I publish a book, do I need to perform a strip dance
>> in front of the public because that's  what publishers demand? All
>> publishers? Fact is that EVERY country and culture has so very many
>> layers of reality that are worth to write about, to know and
>> understand, that we do not need to focus on our own pre-conceptions
>> of that country or culture. Shall we even on a Korean studies
>> discussion list repeat all the three wisdoms about North Korea the
>> world knows for decades, and "discuss" them?  Are we really that
>> self-constrained? Has anyone here any doubts about the crimes and
>> mishaps etc. in North Korea. I don't think so. We don't even have any
>> formal opposition to that from Eastern Europe anymore. Can we then
>> maybe go beyond the black/white broadcasting and get some color on
>> the screen? Color means not just to get more information on the
>> always same issues (human rights violations, prison camps, Communist
>> party, etc.) but to do more and different things with information, to
>> establish and follow different connections between pieces of
>> information, and to consider the fact that we live in a late-modern,
>> post-avantgarde, post-cold-war period. There are so many wonderfully
>> developed fields within the so-called humanistics, and also natural
>> sciences. We can say a lot of fascinating things about North Korea if
>> we do not limit ourselves to the same old soup day in day out, if we
>> stop talking about "North Korea" and talk about the various aspects
>> of culture, economics, daily life.
>>
>> Frank
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Dear Frank, and all,
>>>
>>> Your big frown of disapproval is unmistakable.
>>> But your precise reasons for this are less obvious.
>>> Might you kindly elaborate?
>>>
>>> A. As I read it, you could be saying any (or several)
>>> of the following:
>>>
>>> Accusations that North Korea engages in espionage,
>>> terrorist bombings, and other bad things, are:
>>>
>>> 1. False; or exaggerated; or no longer true.
>>> 2. So well known as to be not worth discussing.
>>> 3. Impolite or impolitic to highlight, even if true;
>>> because this may perpetuate hostile attitudes and
>>> so prevent the Koreas from making peace.
>>> 4. Bad pedagogy, for a teacher. (But why, exactly?
>>> What, instead, would you regard as "good questions"?)
>>> 5. Somehow morally bad to repeatedly dwell upon,
>>> (the curious porn analogy).
>>> 6. Stereotyped; intellectually stale, unchallenging.
>>> 7. Made by people whose company one does not
>>> want to keep (eg Bush, neocons, ROK cold-warriors)
>>>
>>>
>>> B. On shelf shopping, Bo Diddley's wise words spring to mind.
>>> You really can't judge a book by looking at the cover.
>>>
>>> 1. We live under capitalism. Books are commodities. Cover and
>>> title in particular are designed to grab you; to win readers.
>>> Like newspaper headlines, these are often not of the author's  
>>> choosing.
>>> Thus I don't think Gavan Mccormack chose to call his excellent book
>>> Target North Korea. Blame the publishers for this.
>>>
>>> 2. Ergo, title and cover may be misleading as to both the nature,
>>> scope and quality of what lies within. You're surely not seriously
>>> suggesting that it suffices to read with "one eye closed", "from a
>>> secure distance" - and dismiss a whole literature a priori, unread?
>>>
>>> 3. As one of the few in the North Korea field who has not written
>>> a book recently, I must spring to the defence of my colleagues.
>>> All hail Kim Jong-il's nuclear defiance! - which has created a
>>> market for at least two or three dozen new books on the DPRK
>>> in English in the past three years, which might otherwise have had
>>> difficulty finding a publisher and readers.
>>>
>>> Frank's dismissiveness of these riches is unfair, and unwarranted.
>>> Regardless of title, almost all these books are useful. Some, like
>>> Bradley Martin's, are exceptionally good. I can think of only one
>>> really bad one, which (sadly) is Jasper Becker's Rogue Regime.
>>>
>>> 4. If Frank objects to terms like "fatherly leader", surely he  
>>> should
>>> address his complaint to Pyongyang. Brad and others are only using
>>> and reporting the DPRK's own official discourse and terminology.
>>> If this sound ludicrous to our ears, whose fault or problem is that?
>>>
>>> best wishes
>>> Aidan
>>>
>>> AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
>>> Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea,  
>>> Leeds University
>>> Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18  
>>> 3BY, UK
>>> tel: +44(0)  1274  588586         (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634  
>>> mobile:  +44(0)  7970  741307
>>> fax: +44(0)  1274  773663         ISDN:   +44(0)   1274 589280
>>> Email: afostercarter at aol.com     (alt) afostercarter at yahoo.com  
>>> website: www.aidanfc.net
>>> [Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too -  
>>> and let me know, so I can chide AOL]
>>>
>>> ____________
>>>
>>> In a message dated 24/03/2006 06:10:47 GMT Standard Time,  
>>> frank at koreaweb.ws writes:
>>>
>>>> Subj:Re: [KS] spies and thrillers
>>>> Date:24/03/2006 06:10:47 GMT Standard Time
>>>> From:<mailto:frank at koreaweb.ws>frank at koreaweb.ws
>>>> Reply- 
>>>> to:<mailto:Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
>>>> To:<mailto:Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
>>>> Sent from the Internet
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Fatherly leaders and good articles about carnages -- hmmmm...
>>>> With all due respect, are you planning to teach a Korean film class
>>>> like a history class with documentary visual material, including
>>>> North Korea related spy movies from the South? I would find this a
>>>> problematic approach that likely leads to the usual answers that
>>>> anyone here is able to anticipate and that might hinder students to
>>>> develop good questions; and I even find your request to the list
>>>> confusing. We all know the situation as regards to such kind of
>>>> information and what is involved politically. The reply you got was
>>>> to be anticipated.
>>>>
>>>> --QUOTE--
>>>>> "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader" by
>>>>> Bradley K. Martin is a recent book that often offers
>>>>> quite deep examination of this subject (...)."
>>>> ---------
>>>>
>>>> On TV, I remember, an interviewee was asked about watching porn
>>>> strips. His short and cute reply: "Well, you've seen one, you've  
>>>> seen
>>>> them all -- why bother?" Recently doing some window (shelve)  
>>>> shopping
>>>> in bookstores that very sentence came to mind when gazing at the
>>>> KOREA section, from a secure distance, one eye closed. Why are  
>>>> there
>>>> 20 books on North Korea all with the same stale and totally unsexy
>>>> joke as title? Are these all funded by the same known source,  
>>>> edited
>>>> by the same editor, published by the same .... or is there only one
>>>> reader?
>>>>
>>>> Frank
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> --------------------------------------
>>>> Frank Hoffmann
>>>> http://koreaweb.ws
>>
>>
>> --
>> --------------------------------------
>> Frank Hoffmann
>> http://koreaweb.ws
>
>
>
>



Hyung Il Pai
Associate Professor
East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies,
HSSB Building, University of California, Santa Barbara CA 93106
Fax: 805) 893-3011, Phone: 805) 893-2245
Email: Hyungpai at eastasian.ucsb.edu
Dept. Web-site -http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/

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