Sheffield Conference: Reflections on the North — The Spaces and Subjects of the DPRK

Date: Thursday 3 April - Friday 4 April 2025
Venue:

University of Sheffield | Western Bank | Sheffield S10 2TN | www.sheffield.ac.uk | [Map]

Tickets: Free | Online option also available |

Conference will be at Inox Dine | Students' Union Building | Durham Road | Sheffield S10 2TG | Map

This conference explores the theme of reflection as it relates to North Korea. We approach the term in two ways. In the nominal sense, reflections are congregations of work. Whether literary, academic, or artistic, this sort of reflection attends to the state of the archive on North Korea. As a verb, reflection is an act of mediation. In this regard, reflection is a question of the methods and modes used to analyse and articulate North Korean pasts and presents. How do we reflect on North Korea and how have decades of reflection by others shaped these engagements? This event seeks to bring together academic, literary, and artistic submissions to critically and reflectively engage with both of these invocations of the term. We invite works that attend to the ways that knowledge about North Korea is generated and circulated. In particular, we encourage critical engagements with the spaces and subjects that constitute North Korea. Not to confuse reflection on the North with abstraction, we seek to centre the individuals and encounters, topographies and infrastructures that constitute everyday life in North Korea. In doing so, this event invites participants to consider the many reflections on the North in the hope of developing new avenues of approach, analysis and narration.

The conference, hosted by the Centre for Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield, is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies. Attendees are welcome to attend all or part of the conference, with refreshments and lunch included. Please indicate which days you plan to attend in the Evenbrite questionnaire, even if you only plan to drop into a single panel. We are offering the option to attend in person or online (for the panel presentations only) so please indicate which option you prefer when registering.

Conference Schedule and Speakers

DAY 1 – Thursday 3rd April
9.45-11.00	Conference welcome (offline only – no online option) Book talk: A Hard Road Out — One woman’s escape from North Korea, with Jihyun Park and Seh-Lynn Chai (no online option for this session, in-person only)
11.00-11.15	Break
11.15-12.45	Panel 1: Sports, Medicine and the Body Intaek Hong, University of Washington Red Medicine and the Red Cross: Global entanglement of socialist medicine in North Korea, 1947 — 1965 Jung-Woo Lee, University of Edinburgh Reflections on DPRK’s Politics and Propaganda Through the Recent Success of North Korean Women’s Football on the International Stage Yong Ja Hong University of North Korean Studies Reflecting on the Chollima Movement: How landmark athletics reform boosted mass mobilisation
12.45-13.30	Lunch
13.30-15.00	Panel 2: Agency, Activism and Representation in North Korean Studies Callum Sol Cho-Morrissey University of London Uncovering the Colonial Debris of the ‘Reunification Village’ in New Malden Shinhye Lee University of Sheffield Strengthened Ethnic Identity: The case of North Korean women migrants in the United States as reflected in their everyday lives Tycho van der Hoog and Remco Breuker Netherlands Defence Academy, Leiden University Liberating North Korean Studies: Authoritarianism and activism in area Studies
15.00-15.15	Break
15.15-16.45	Panel 3: The Diplomatic, the Digital and the Divine Peter Han University of Cambridge Studying North Korea through South Korean Diplomatic Archives: The case of the 1980s Jung Seob Scott Kim University of Arizona Reflections on Insider Threats: A case study of North Korean cyber operations in the global workforce Jusung Lee Yale University Redefining Belief: North Korea’s evolving concept of religion and its ideological implications
DAY 2 Friday 4th April
10.00-11.30	Panel 4: Framing and Figuring the North Dafna Zur Stanford University Sense- and World-Making in the DPRK Popular science and storytelling in the DPRK 1950-1965 Gabor Sebo Palacky University Cinematic Portrayals of Political Identity and Collective Memory in North Korean Film Janet Poole University of Toronto Literary Reflections on the North from the Late 1940s
11.30-11.45	Break
11.45-13.15	Panel 5: Artistic Mobilities Beatrix Mecsi Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), Budapest Seoul Artist Jeong Hyeon Ung (1911-1976) and His Way to DPRK: Reflections of cultural heritage and its new meanings Sung Soo Lee University of Toronto Off-Screen Dynamics: Rural Mobile Cinema in Cold War North Korea Sarah Ingrid Bruhl Freie Universitat Berlin Travelling lconographies: North Korean murals in the Independence Memorial Museum in Namibia
13.15-14.15	Lunch
14.15-15.45	Panel 6: Science and the Environment Derek Kramer University of Sheffield Let’s Turn the Grass into Meat’: Animal husbandry as women’s work in early Cold War North Korea. Robert Winstanley-Chesters University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds Contested Maritime Ecologies of Peter the Great Bay and the Sea of Okhotsk: North Korean and Russian struggles over maritime stocks and salmon conservation Lauren Eloise Robertson University of Central Lancashire Green Goals in a Grey Area: The role of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in North Korea.