“I learned long ago to never predict anything about North Korea.”

So began the keynote address by Anna Fifield, veteran journalist and winner of the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award. Speaking at the Award’s seventeenth annual panel discussion “How North Korea Is, and Isn’t, Changing under Kim Jong Un,” Fifield, the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post , shared some of the many observations she has made since she first began covering North Korea in 2004.

Two other North Korea experts joined Fifield at the panel: Barbara Demick, New York correspondent of the Los Angeles Times, formerly head of the bureaus in Beijing and Seoul, and the 2012 Shorenstein award winner; and Andray Abrahamian, the 2018-2019 Koret Fellow, whose previous role as executive director of Choson Exchange and other projects took him to the DPRK nearly 30 times. Yong Suk Lee, deputy director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC, chaired the panel.

The presence of another person—the Dear Respected Comrade himself—was also very much felt in the room, if only in spirit.

Barbara Demick (center) speaks at 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award.

Survival at any cost

At various points throughout its 70-year history, experts have predicted the demise of the "Hermit Kingdom." Fifield herself admitted to occasionally thinking along such terms.

And yet the country continues to prove them wrong.

“[D]uring my first stint covering North Korea, [I] just couldn’t envisage any way that this regime could survive the death of the second-generation leader and the transition to a third generation,” she said. “Kim Il Sung had created a myth of revolutionary heroism around himself, and a myth of divine selection around his son, Kim Jong Il. How could the North Korean people, who no longer live in a Hermit Kingdom, tolerate a third leader called Kim, let alone one who had no highly exaggerated or plain fictional back story?”

“Yet," Fifield continued, "here we are. Next month, Kim Jong Un will celebrate seven years in charge of North Korea.”

One prominent reason for the nation's recent survival, and an idea put forward by Fifield and supported by her co-panelists, was the development of markets in the communist state.

For decades, North Korea operated under the centrally-planned communist model. Even as China pursued reform and as the Soviet Union collapsed, the North Korean state maintained its central position in the economy.

However, following the famines of the 1990s, the state had no choice but to allow market activity to develop. Under the third Kim markets have continued to grow.

“There are now more than 400 established, state-sanctioned markets in North Korea,” said Fifield. “That’s more than double the number that existed when Kim Jong Un took over at the end of 2011.”

A side effect of this nascent market economy has been the emergence of new elites in the purported “classless” society. Fifield described the development of a capital within the capital—“Pyonghattan”—where newfound elites purchase clothes from western retailers and undergo plastic surgery for their eyelids.

Abrahamian concurred, noting that Kim Jong Un made sure to coddle this upper middle and upper class in Pyongyang. "The old way of doing that under Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, was very much through a loyalty and gift economy," Abrahamian said. "Money was not necessary in the old North Korea. Now it is. You do need it to get your daily necessities, and if you’re lucky enough, the products [from the “outside world”] help you to have a more pleasurable life through the market.”

At the other end of the spectrum, North Koreans turn to the markets not out of entrepreneurial zeal, but out of a need to survive. As an example, Fifield described meeting a mother and daughter living near the border with China. The mother took her daughter out of school in order to raise pigs and make tofu. Before dawn, they trekked into the mountains to tend crops of corn. It was a back-breaking existence. "If they were lucky, they made enough money each day to buy food for themselves," Fifield said. "Many days, they did all this to break even."

Andray Abrahamian responds to a question from the audience.

A smart tyrant not to be underestimated

The panel continued to focus on the man currently at the helm in North Korea.

“When I returned for my second go at covering the Koreas, I wanted to figure out how he’d done it," said Fifield. "How had this podgy young upstart with no qualifications other than being born into this family managed to take control of this regime…? How had he managed to keep intact this anachronistic system that should have died years, even decades, before?”

Fifield emphasized that her comments did not equate to admiration for Kim Jong Un. “He’s a tyrant,” she reminded the room. “But he’s a smart tyrant who’s been operating in a calculating way. To treat him as a joke or a madman is to underestimate the threat of him.”

“Kim Jong Un has not allowed these markets to flourish because he cares about the people and their wellbeing,” Fifield continued. “He has demonstrated time and time again that he doesn’t care at all about the people.”

“There’s only one thing he cares about and that is staying in power.” 

Demick cautioned further against over-estimating the positive impact of market development on life in North Korea. “The people Anna interviewed for her groundbreaking series in 2017 in The Washington Post were disgusted with the system,” said Demick. “With the income inequality, with the corruption, with the controls.”

“For them, what’s the worst thing about North Korea? Simply being born there.”

The panelists participated in a lively audience Q & A.

A celebration of journalism

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, recognizes accomplished journalists committed to critical reporting on and exploring the complexities of Asia through their writing. It alternates between honoring recipients from the West, who mainly address American audiences, and recipients from Asia, who pave the way for freedom of the press in their countries. Established in 2002, the award honors the legacy of APARC benefactor Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein. A visionary businessman, philanthropist, and champion of Asian-American relations, Shorenstein was dedicated to promoting excellence in journalism and a deeper understanding of Asia.

While the reporting of each year's recipient focuses on different regions and areas of interest, the award consistently recognizes quality journalism. In his welcome remarks, panel chair Yong Suk Lee stated, “In the face of current attacks on journalists and on the truth in the United States and the world, [Shorenstein APARC is] even more committed to excellence in journalism, and to defending independent and free media."

Fifield’s co-panelists spoke at length about how deserving she was of the award. Before their first meeting in Seoul, Abrahamian confessed to harboring skepticism about Fifield. “I had read some of her work before and knew she had analytical chops, but thought to myself that journalists are always fighting for the next scoop.” However, after talking to Fifield for only a few minutes, Abrahamian readily dropped his guard. “I told myself, 'This is a special journalist; she's got something.’"

A previous recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award herself, Demick was equally enthusiastic in her praise of Fifield. “For the last four years, [Anna] had owned the North Korea story like no other journalist I’ve met, including myself.”

Fifield was presented with the Shorenstein award and prize at a private evening ceremony.

Watch Fifield’s keynote speech below. An audio version is availalbe on our SoundCloud channel.

Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America — Social Science panel. From left to right: UC Berkeley's Laura Nelson, University of Michigan's Jordan Siegel, Stanford's Yong Suk Lee, USC's David Kang, Harvard's Paul Chang.

How can Korean studies faculty cultivate supportive and critical scholarly communities with graduate students? What can be done to overcome the severe constraints on Korean language training in North America? Why is there a dearth of Korea scholarship in academic literature? And how should Korean studies librarians prepare for the future in the light of new technologies and young researchers’ increasing interest in digital scholarship?

These were some of the questions examined at a two-day conference, “Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America,” convened by the Korea Program of Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) on November 1-2. Co-sponsored by the Seoul-based Foundation Academia Platonica, the conference, the first of its kind, gathered distinguished Korean studies scholars from twelve North American institutions to consider the state of the field, assess its challenges, and carry forward a vision for its future direction and potential. Its six unique panels focused not only on the major disciplines of Korean studies—history, literature, and the social sciences—but also on language education, library collections and services, and Korean Wave.

“The presentations and discussions by our fellow experts reflected the breadth and depth of Korean studies in North America,” says APARC Director and the Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin. “Our program was established at Stanford in 2001 and has since become a leader in Korean studies in North America, so it is a special privilege for us to bring together colleagues from eminent institutions around the continent to further advance Korean studies education and research in the academic and policy worlds, and to build upon our track record of action and achievements.”

“The field of Korean studies, however,” notes Shin, “has significantly changed over the past seventeen years and it isn’t without its challenges. This is our opportunity to consider frankly where we go next and how we could explore the path ahead together.”

Conference participants indeed engaged in deep conversations and shared ideas and dilemmas regarding teaching in the different disciplines of Korean studies in North America. Harvard sociologist Paul Chang listed three types of challenges facing the field: publication, academic, and professional challenges. David C. Kang, professor of international relations and director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California, emphasized the publication challenge: why is it, asked Kang, that top academic journals in the discipline of political science and international relations publish so much more scholarship about Europe than they do about Korea and Asia at large, even while the rise of Asian nations is surely one of the most consequential issues of the twenty-first century? The onus, Kang argued, comes back to East Asia scholars “to produce better and more compelling scholarship, and to better train graduate students.”

University of British Columbia's Ross King and conference participants.

Yet complex issues surround the question of how to broaden graduate coursework—and whether to do so. Korean language and linguistics expert Ross King, head of the department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, was one of several panelists who considered the obstacles to graduate training, among different aspects of academic challenges facing the field of Korean studies. King probed into how Sinocentrism and what he called the “Mandarin conceit”—that is, the notion that training in Literary Sinitic should be predicated on a near-native proficiency in modern Mandarin Chinese—are emerging as a major stumbling block to the study of premodern Korean literary culture. He also pointed to the constraints on language training in both Korean and hanmun in North America, which, he claimed, is why we can probably anticipate continued decrease in the number of ethnically non-Korean (non-Korea-educated) graduate students undertaking graduate study in Korean literature.

University of Washington's Hyokyoung Yi (left) and Stanford's Joshua Capitanio at a panel on library collections and service.

Sung-Ock Sohn, who coordinates the Korean language program in the department of Asian languages and cultures at the University of California – Los Angeles, further shed light on King’s prediction. She explained that while enrollments in Korean language classes have shown a sharp increase in American higher education institutions in the past decade, particularly at the introductory level and among ethnically non-Korean students, there is a high attrition rate of students from an introductory to advanced Korean classes nationwide.

How should the field move forward?

Participants proposed a host of ideas to that end. These included helping graduate students collaborate with colleagues in Korea; dedicating funding for junior faculty to spend periods of time before tenure conducting research and honing language skills in Korea at appropriate institutions, and for mid-career scholars to spend a year in Korea; emphasizing the application of social science theories and methods to premodern and modern East Asia; motivating scholars to apply a comparative lens to the study of the historical and contemporary experience of East Asia; and integrating linguistic and cultural diversity in Korean language classes by, for example, incorporating service learning in authentic contexts and extending the content spectrum to include topics such as Korean popular culture.

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Korean Wave was the focus of the conference’s widely attended closing panel that featured K-pop star Siwon Choi, a member of Korean boy band Super Junior, and multi-platinum music producer Dominique Rodriguez, managing director of SM Entertainment USA. They spoke about the global reach of Korean pop music and some of the ways in which Korean popular culture could stimulate interest in Korean studies. Dafna Zur, assistant professor in Stanford’s department of East Asian languages and cultures, who chaired the panel, challenged her students to consider “what it means not just to monetize culture but to design culture with specific markets and audience in mind.” The Stanford Daily published a detailed article on the panel.

“We are grateful to Foundation Academia Platonica for its generous support of Stanford’s Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC and for making this conference possible through our shared vision for the future of Korean studies in North America,” said Gi-Wook Shin. “Our thanks also go to our many other friends and partners, including the Korea Foundation that has helped achieve great results through its commitment to promoting understanding of Korea in academia and beyond and its support of the overseas Korean Studies Program since its establishment in 1991.”

South Korean TV company SBS NBC filmed the conference that will be featured in an upcoming documentary about Korean studies in the United States.

Read the conference report or listen to the audio recordings of the sessions, below.

A matrix with m rows and n columns looks like a rectangle filled with tiny boxes: m times n boxes, to be exact. But after visiting the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) for three months, my mental matrix of the world looked more like a weird trapezoid. New acquaintances added rows and their unique perspectives added columns. My brain drew lines from geography to economics to politics, but the lines were on crumpled paper. Ah and don't forget history. So multiply the rectangle by time t and out comes a 3D trapezoid.

How do we mentally travel through odd shapes with any sense and efficiency? China Studies in Beijing classes at the SCPKU sharpened our tools for the endeavor. On day one, Thomas Fingar emphasized that the goal of a foreign policy class is not to remember a list of facts, but to build a personal matrix of relations and to learn tricks for traversing the matrix. Jean Oi demonstrated how people's ideals can constrain the goals of business and political leaders. Scott Rozelle showed how economic developments in China changed real lives. Clarity reduces the dimensions we care about. Sometimes we need to melt and reshape the whole matrix. Other times we just need to prune a few rows and columns. We have the algorithms, technologies, "intelligences." Our tools, both natural and artificial, can be useful for navigating political spheres and leading to action.

But tools are not all we have. Other people's matrices sometimes slam into our own. Warping it, filling it. At Peking University (PKU), I met students with different stories and missions. One student transfers industrial expertise from China to Southeast Asia. Another connects Stanford and PKU students to openly discuss US-China relations. I also collaborated with PKU researchers. The scientists are fast learners and deeply curious. The clinicians are hard working and harder feeling. They all faithfully give their time and spirit. Despite the different bases of our matrices, language in particular, we could cooperate and together build a fuller model of the world.

What was the visiting graduate student's place in all of this? As a psychologist, I study humans and their brains. The brain itself is a messy matrix. Figuratively, a life history of data to curate; literally, cells that code spacetime. Maybe the psychology and geometry of every other brain is not so foreign from each of our own. Our science can keep digging deeper and tilling truer in search of common ground. We can build an empirical basis for humans to flourish together.

Sometimes, after long times, a complex matrix can instead be depicted as a fractal. Like flakes of snow. Each one is unique, starting with the same properties of H₂O but morphing through many phases. Maybe with study and reflection we will look back at both China studies and brain studies and, rather than see a messy matrix, find a fractal. Hopefully such a model can also be useful to guide our way forward.

About the author Josiah Leong: Awarded a SCPKU Predoctoral fellowship for research from August to November 2018. He is a doctoral candidate in psychology and his research is about how brain creates emotions and makes decisions. During his visit, he started a neuroimaging study with the Peking psychology department and taught neuroimaging data analyses to addiction researchers at the Peking Sixth Hospital. He also engaged with researchers in anthropology, history, and political science, and he audited courses from the China Studies in Beijing overseas program. These experiences clarified his vision for how psychological science can guide the policies that govern everyday life. He has seen how scientific collaboration builds communities across borders, and he remains optimistic that the practice of science can lead people to question their assumptions and reshape their matrices, so to speak.