The Graduate School of Journalism’s Covering North Korea class, taught by Carolyn Wakeman in fall semester 2005, brought to campus a series of reporters from the field, scholars, NGO experts, and documentary filmmakers in an ongoing effort to assess information and commentary in the U.S. media about the reclusive “rogue state.”
In December two students traveled to South Korea and two to North China to meet North Korean migrants and defectors, and the missionaries and aid workers who support their efforts to survive and adapt after often harrowing journeys. This roundtable offers slides and first-person interview results that let you glimpse the situation North Koreans face when they journey beyond their borders. Other reporting, images, and seminar events can be viewed at
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/north_korea/
The Challenge of Adjustment in South Korea
Nearly 7,000 North Koreans live in South Korea today. Upon entry into South Korea, North Koreans spend their first months at Hanawon, a government resettlement center where they learn about South Korean laws, jobs, how to open a bank account and pay rent. Kai Ma will highlight the adjustment experiences of the North Koreans she interviewed, some of whom attend and graduate from South Korean universities while others struggle with psychological trauma, unemployment, discrimination, and cultural dislocation.
Aid Strategies: Social Services in Seoul
North Koreans living in South Korea face a difficult adjustment process after moving from the communist North to the capitalist South. Absent a sustained, comprehensive government program for North Koreans, a number of religious groups and NGOs have been attempting to address this need, offering classes, counseling and job training programs. Tomio Geron will discuss the educational and social service strategies of two of these groups as well as how external factors such as religion and the political context of North Korea – South Korea relations affects their work.
North KoreansÌ¢âÂ㢠Economic Networks
The July 2002 economic reforms in North Korea were designed to generate hard currency for the North Korean state while forcing North Koreans to learn about capitalism through markets and the temporary suspension of the public distribution system. Since then, North Korean trade with China has swelled to at least $1.5 billion USD in 2005. As the North Korean government tries to come in from the cold, many of the people Ki-Min Sung interviewed in Northeast China and Seoul feel shuttered out. North Koreans continue to rely on an informal economy that depends on financial support from family members, strangers, and churches in China, Japan, and South Korea. Her talk will explore the impact of North KoreaÌ¢âÂã¢s economic reforms beyond its borders.
Of Migrants and Missionaries: North Koreans in China and Their Christian Shepherds
A majority of the estimated 10,000 to 100,000 North Koreans now living illegally in China have only one source of social support: an almost invisible network of Christian churches and missionary groups organized in loose terrorist-cell fashion to avoid being shut down by the Chinese government. Beginning with the famine of 1995-1997, when North Koreans started pouring across the border, Christian groups have been practically the only source of information about the plight of ChinaÌ¢âÂã¢s North Korean migrant population. Yet in reporting what missionaries in the network have to say, few in the Western press have bothered to examine the network itself. Josh Chin will describe how North Koreans survive in China given the current political climate and examine the attitudes, agendas and methods of the missionaries who help them.
Speakers:
Kai Ma is a second-year student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she is writing on North Koreans’ adjustment in capitalist Seoul. She has reported on pop culture and Korean-American communities for Jane, LA Weekly, East Bay Express, and Hyphen. In 2005, she was the Kaiser Media Intern in Urban Health Reporting for Newsday in New York.
Tomio Geron is a second-year student in the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. His work, focusing on the social effects of migration, especially in Asian communities, has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Asianweek and other publications. He also previously worked as a radio producer for 99.5 FM-WBAI in New York City.
Ki-Min Sung is a student at UC BerkeleyÌ¢âÂã¢s Graduate School of Journalism. She has reported for The San Diego Union Tribune and will write for the Dallas Morning News beginning in May. She has contributed military and political reporting to the KoreAm Journal since 2003. She was an award winning news producer of three syndicated programs on National Public Radio and Public Radio International.
Josh Chin is a second-year student in the concurrent master’s degree program in journalism and Asian studies at UC Berkeley. He has spent four years living in China as a student and journalist, including a stint as copy editor at the government-run China Daily newspaper.