[KS] Signs of Hope for the Hermit Kingdom (Online Chronicle of Higher Edu...

[Afostercarter at aol.com]

Many thanks to Frank for alerting us to this fascinating  account.
 
In general, I would hope that this List would always welcome  such
notice of articles or events on Korea; especially if these are  in places 
where one wouldn't normally or necessarily go looking for  them.
 
Kind regards
Aidan FC
 
 
Aidan  Foster-Carter 
Honorary Senior Research  Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds 
University, UK
 
__________________________
 
 
In a message dated 26/10/2013 01:53:35 GMT Daylight Time, fshulman at umd.edu  
writes:

If the  Korean Studies listserve  is permitted to circulate a posting from 
the  online "Chronicle of Higher Education" (Washington, D.C.), then the 
following  may be of interest to listserve members.

Frank Joseph  Shulman
________________________________________

Signs of Hope for  the Hermit Kingdom

By Guest Writer

Online Chronicle of Higher  Education (Washington, D.C.), October 24, 2013

The following is a guest  post by Jonathan Levine, a freelance journalist 
and a former lecturer in  American studies and English at Tsinghua 
University, in Beijing. The names of  students have been changed for their  protection.
———————————————————–

Clarissa was one of the smartest  students I ever taught at Tsinghua 
University. An English-literature major  fluent in Chinese, Korean, and English, 
she could discuss at length issues as  varied as gay marriage, the limits of 
Internet freedom, and the morality of  terrorism. She was recently accepted 
to graduate programs in international  relations at both Tsinghua and Peking 
University, China’s two best  institutions, and hopes for a career in 
government service.

Believe it  or not, when Clarissa goes home for the holidays, it’s not to 
family in China  or Japan or Europe, but in Pyongyang, North Korea. North 
Korean students  studying in China rarely make headlines, but their bursting 
potential may  augur profound consequences for the future of what is known as 
the Hermit  Kingdom.

At Tsinghua, I taught and interacted with a number of North  Korean 
students over the years. What I found most intriguing was how typical  of 
international students they were. Contrary to the popular narrative of  rabid 
xenophobia and virulent anti-Americanism, most of them were insatiably  curious 
about other cultures, America’s most of all. I am friends with one on  
Facebook, another sat for my course “American Culture and Society.” Except for  the 
occasional lapel pin bearing the likeness of Kim Il Sung, the nation’s  
founder, they were generally indistinguishable from other international  
students.

Home, however, was never far away. Once a week, Tsinghua’s  North Korean 
students are recalled to their nation’s city-block-sized embassy  for 
evaluations and debriefing. Their classes and outside activities are  reviewed, and 
they are expected to undergo a bizarre ritual of self-criticism  in which 
they discuss how they have failed to live up to the spirit of their  leader’s 
ideals.

When North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il died, in 2011,  Clarissa came to my 
class dressed all in black. She was shaken, but a far cry  from the 
much-caricatured video of sobbing North Korean citizens. While her  grief was 
genuine, I suspected that underneath lay more-complicated  feelings.

Another student, named Michael, was more  forthcoming.

“Did you feel sad?” I asked him, several months  afterward.

“I had to feel sad,” he noted, flashing a wry  smile.

I am under no illusion about who these students are. A famine  killed an 
estimated one million of their countrymen in the 1990s, but  Tsinghua’s North 
Koreans seem accustomed to a lifestyle of conspicuous  consumption. They 
would not be out of place in New York or Paris. Most wore  stylish clothes and 
eschewed pedal bikes in favor of motor scooters. I sparked  a fit of 
laughter in one when I asked if his sleek new iPad came from the  Apple store in 
Pyongyang.

Their families are the cream of North Korean  society. Many students said 
their fathers were “businessmen,” an increasingly  common profession in the 
hive of quasi-legal private industry that has  developed along the porous 
Chinese-North Korean border.

While these  students aren’t representative, their very existence and 
study-abroad  experience should be cause for hope.

In his recent book, The Impossible  State: North Korea, Past and Future, 
the academic and former National Security  Council member Victor Cha argued 
that North Korea today is more isolated and  less international than in 
previous generations. During the cold war, he  noted, members of the North Korean 
elite traveled widely in the Communist  world, and the leader, Kim Il Sung, 
was on good terms with the likes of East  Germany’s Erich Honecker and 
Romania’s Nicolae Ceau?escu. Since Chinese reform  and the fall of international 
Communism,, however, North Korea has experienced  unprecedented isolation. 
The wealth of ideas and intercultural exchange  offered by study abroad could 
be enormously consequential in any future  opening.

In an excerpt from an essay by Clarissa, we can catch a  glimpse of the 
country’s current dystopia.

“I grew up in a country  which is prepared to fight a war at any time,” 
she writes. “When I was  studying in Pyongyang, every semester schools held 
anti defense practices, in  which every student and faculty member would go 
down to the basement of their  school and have classes there in case of a 
sudden war.”

A North Korean  transition from Stalinist introversion to a self-sufficient 
and responsible  member of the international community may be one of the 
premier challenges of  the 21st century. But if Clarissa and her cohort are 
any indication of the  next generation of leadership, I believe there may be 
light at the end of that  tunnel.

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