Dissertation
Pride, Prejudice and Manchurian Heritage: North Korean Migrants and Memories of a Land Left Behind
Christopher Green defended his thesis on 26 February 2020
- Author
- C.K. Green
- Date
- 26 February 2020
- Links
- Leiden Repository
The thesis puts the relationship between the North Korean central state’s conservative official culture and variegated forms of real culture under the microscope. Via a survey and interview project conducted in 2016 that involved 1.5 percent of the resettled North Korean defector-migrant population in South Korea, the work interrogates the “cultural identities” of North Koreans, asking as we approach the third decade of the 21st century: It finds that while the North Korean government promotes a vision of itself that is infamously racially charged and enforces ethnic group closure as a principle, ordinary North Korean people retain agency in their lives. Identities emerge that are based on much more than just the socialization processes imposed by the state from above in schools and other institutional settings.
Supervisor: prof. dr. R.E. Breuker