'Sex, Drugs and Rock‘n’Roll in North Korea' Seminar and Opening of 'The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea' Photo Exhibition

REPORT

Sex, Drugs and Rock‘n’Roll in North Korea Seminar and Opening of The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea Photo Exhibition

The Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (CCS) Research Centre at UTS presented a free joint North Korea seminar and photo exhibition opening on Tuesday, 19 August 2014.

The Seminar, titled Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll in North Korea was followed by the official opening of a North Korea photo exhibition by the Hon. Bob Carr, newly appointed Professor and Head of the UTS China Relations Institute entitled The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea. The seminar was well attended with over 70 in attendance and covered in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Korean press. The seminar discussed topics relating to North Korea’s emerging market economy and changing cultural landscape, as well as the status of North Korean immigrants in Australia. It featured leading international North Korea experts Professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University and Professor Seok-Hyang Kim of Ewha Womans University and Professor Kim Kyungmook of Chugyo University. Joining them were UTS CCS scholars Dr Kyung-Ja Jung, Dr Bronwen Dalton and ANU’s Dr Leonid Petrov. UTS Insearch Chair and former Ambassador to South Korea Mack Williams gave the closing remarks.

A highlight of the seminar was the participation of two North Korean students who have received scholarship to study English at UTS Insearch under the 'UTS: INSEARCH Scholarship for Former North Korean Students'.

The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea exhibition presents photographs of everyday life in North Korea, aiming to showcase the 'human face' of North Korea amid often sensationalised, caricatured and unbalanced media reportage. It is open til the end of October on level 4 in the UTS Library.

The workshop and exhibition were cooperatively funded by the Australian Research Council, UTS' Centre for Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (CCS) and The Toyota Foundation. The joint event is connected to an ARC Discovery grant titled 'North Korea's Quiet Transformation: Women in the Rise of the Informal Market'. This is the first major research project to investigate the role played by women in the emergence of a nascent capitalist economy in North Korea, and one on which the featuring panellists are chief investigators. 

It also follows the May 2014 launching of the inaugural 'UTS: INSEARCH Scholarship for Former North Korean Students', to which featuring panellists Dr Kyung-Ja Jung and Dr Bronwen Dalton were instrumental. Worth $24,000 per year in the way of two $12,000 scholarships, the initiative covers the costs of 6 months full time study at the UTS INSEARCH pathway language program for two North Korean origin students (now South Korean citizens).

With North Korea rarely receiving coverage beyond media sensationalism, this seminar and exhibition event provided a revealing and rarely seen glimpse into North Korea, its culture and the everyday lives of its citizens.