The East Asian Studies Center embarked on a new collaboration with the Korea and the World (KATW) team to develop a series of podcast interviews in 2021-2022. Korea and the World is a podcast that interviews academics, professionals and intellectuals living and working in South Korea on current political, economic and societal issues. The third episode in the series is now available.

To learn more about the role that technology, and especially cell phones, plays in North Korean society, the KATW team interviewed Prof. Suk-Young Kim. Prof. Kim spoke about North Korean millennials and their characteristics, where North Korea stands in terms of technology, how technology and foreign media consumption interact to produce emergent trust networks among North Koreans, and why North Korea’s regime permits the spread of such a technology in the first place.

Suk-Young Kim is a Professor and Head of Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama with a Certificate in Gender Studies from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her first book, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea, was the winner of the 2013 James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. More recently, she published K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance.

Listeners can find the podcast on the KATW website, on iTunes, YouTube, or via RSS.

This episode was supported in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.