[KS] North Korean copyright issues

[Maya Stiller]

Dear Keith and Benoit,

An employee of 남북경제문화협력재단 told me that they primarily issue permission
forms for scholars active in South Korea. Since my publisher was
pushing for a formal permission form and I did not want to abandon the
image, I kept calling them until they finally let me pay a fee to
issue a permission form, and I was able to use an image of a Buddhist
sculpture from a North Korean book. I think it was about $100 for one
image that I had provided myself (a scan from the book). Usually when
requesting permission to publish an image, the museum/institution
provides a high-resolution image. Not in this case, so I am not sure
if it is worth all the hassle, unless the publisher insists.

I like the idea of just adding a statement to the publication, like Keith did.

Hope this is useful!

Best,
Maya


Maya Stiller
Associate Professor, Korean Art & Visual Culture
University of Kansas

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 5:16 PM Keith Howard <kh at soas.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Benoit,
>
> I would be interested in hearing from others about how they tackle copyright issues with North Korean materials. I struggled with this when preparing my recent Oxford UP book, Songs of the "Great Leaders": Ideology and Creativity in North Korean Music and Dance. I first approached the DPRK Embassy in London, explaining the book was being published by an educational publisher, and outlining the research (and fieldwork in Pyongyang) that I had done, as well as listing everything I was including that might have copyright. A minister asked me to supply copies of all the materials (not the book; but the materials I was citing that might be subject to copyright), which I duly supplied, along with a proposed credit line to be included in the book. Needless to say, I never heard any more. On the advice of South Korean colleagues, I also approached the (then) 남북경제문화협력재단. Needless to say, that also met with silence. Not least since there was a good paper trail and an 11-month gap between me writing to the DPRK side and the book's publication, but also because of the acknowledgement statement I included in the book, OUP was content. The statement I put in the book made reference to the DPRK copyright law (as lodged at WIPO):
> 'In respect to the North Korean materials cited, I have made efforts to contact possible copyright holders through state officials and representative bodies. In the absence of a notification of any claim, I cite North Korean materials in accordance with the following provisions of the Copyright Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (2001, as amended in 2006 by Decree 1532 of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly): Article 6 (Exclusion), Article 12 (Exclusion), Article 32 (Fair Use; particularly 32-3 (use for education/academia) and 32-6 (quotation)).'
>
> Keith Howard
> Professor Emeritus and Leverhulme Fellow, SOAS, University of London
> kh at soas.ac.uk
>
>
>
> On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 at 17:00, <koreanstudies-request at koreanstudies.com> wrote:
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>> To: "koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com" <koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com>
>> Cc:
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>> Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 20:29:34 +1000
>> Subject: Re: [KS] KCNA and Rodong Sinmun Article Data
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>> Dear Scott,
>>
>>
>>
>> How did you handle copyright issues?
>>
>> I have an extensive collection of digitized North Korean materials, but have so far found it impossible to secure institutional support for an online (public) database due to the difficulty of clearing copyright.