DEEP experiences in north korea
by alice tse“North Korea through the eyes of Korean Americans”
What is the word that comes to mind when you think of North Korea?
Perhaps, you, as many of the attendees of a report-back held by members of a peace delegation to North Korea, think of such words as “cold,” “failed,” “oppression,” “isolated,” “war,” and “division”…but would you ever think “misunderstood,” “reunification,” or even “hopeful?"
The delegates of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/North Korea) Education and Exposure Program (appropriately named DEEP) shared their personal experiences in an intense two-week excursion into North Korea. DEEP was a program founded 8 years ago that, in conjunction, with KEEP (Korea Education and Exposure Program) in South Korea, seeks to increase awareness and mobilize for peace, justice, and reunification in the Korean peninsula.
Calls for reunification would undoubtedly be met by a pervading skepticism throughout the globe that has been shaped by what, Christine Hong, an English post-doctoral fellow here at Berkeley, refers to as “Cold War and Bush-era caricatures of North Korea” and North Korea’s very own policy of juche, or self-reliance (i.e. isolationism). The West’s perception of North Korea, currently a communist state, is a negative and biased one which is compounded by isolationist policies that North Korea has chosen and the sanctions that have been placed from without. DEEP is specifically founded to “demystify the DPRK” and dismantle this Western perception of North Korea by providing Korean Americans the opportunity to “build person to person understanding” through interactions with North Korean people in everyday settings, to visit historical sites that pre-date the division of Korea, at the conclusion of WWII, and to really understand North Korea’s prolific history through rigorous study and correspondences with North Korean scholars, farmers, workers, and students.
Coming from vastly different backgrounds, the participants had various reasons for partaking in DEEP: the three delegates that were present for the report-back included a post-doctoral fellow, an art teacher, and a Korea policy expert. Hong is endeavoring to do a comparative study between war commemorations in North Korea and in Vietnam. Kei Fischer, an art teacher whose mother is a zainichi (a second generation Korean who grew up in Japan) and whose father an American, was motivated to engage in DEEP because she felt that North Korea is her “homeland.” Despite these varying motives, all shared a common desire to learn about North Korea and to see “North Korea through Korean American eyes.”
The delegates told of a rich history of nationalism that continues to thrive today. Prior to 1945, Koreans contributed to the effort to combat Japanese imperialism, a struggle that North Koreans continued against American imperialism after WWII; this layered history is commemorated in the monument on Mansu Hill. While Western media tends to focus only on the grand statue of Kim Il Sung, the leader during the Korean War and the father of Kim Jong-Il, we are rarely shown the mass sculptures erected on either side of Kim Il-sung to celebrate the war efforts of the common Korean people.
The delegates as well as others of the Korean diaspora feel the urgency for reunification. The people making efforts for reunification do not naively overlook North Korea’s isolationist policies nor do they overlook the failings of the North Korean government and economy. Rather, the process has been a collective effort towards peace and the reconstruction of Korea which could help alleviate the state of North Korea, through the merging of resources, as well as ease tensions between North Korea and the U.S. The merging of the Korean states and resources could potentially elevate Korea to a major power in the world. Of course, as Hong notes, “no one said reunification wouldn’t be messy,” but the work that DEEP, the only program of its kind in North Korea, is putting forth in elucidating North Korean history and society as well as recent mobilization in the Korean American community to urge the U.S. government to sign a peace treaty with North Korea is progress.
For more information about DEEP and KEEP, visit nodutdol.org and find out more about Korea-US relations at kpolicy.org.