So, the Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang have “obtained” US military reports that indicate additional spots on Camp Carroll where toxic chemicals might have been buried. From the Hani piece:
Amid an ongoing examination by a joint South Korean-U.S. investigation team into allegations that Agent Orange was buried at the U.S. base of Camp Carroll in the Waegwan Township of North Gyeongsang’s Chilgok County, it emerged Monday that United States Forces Korea (USFK) previously verified the presence of a pit containing buried chemicals within the camp during a 2004 investigation. Analysts say the revelation is likely to cause controversy, as USFK did not previously notify the South Korean government of its findings.
According to a draft report obtained by the Hankyoreh on Monday for a preliminary study for treatment of environmental pollution in Camp Carroll, the U.S. military discovered indications of a burial site within the camp measuring 25 meters in length, 14 meters in width, and six meters in depth in 2004. Following a subsequent soil study, the U.S. military confirmed contamination with high concentrations of highly carcinogenic perchloroethylene (PCE). Also detected were pesticides, heavy metals, and components of dioxin, which is connected to Agent Orange.
According to a Democratic Labor Party lawmaker, this amounts to those evil Yanks trying to put one over on Korea:
Environmental groups are demanding that the U.S. military disclose all its information about environmental contamination and expand the scope of regions under investigation to include the whole of Camp Carroll.
Hong Hee-deok, a lawmaker on the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee, said, “For all intents and purposes, the U.S. military deceived the South Korean government.”
“The U.S. military needs to disclose information in a transparent manner about the places where it has conducted environmental contamination studies,” Hong added.
In its editorial on the matter, the Kyunghyang is even demanding an apology:
As it has been revealed that toxic chemicals are buried in new areas previously unconfirmed, it is natural that the matter be re-investigated from the very beginning, including widening the scope of the investigation to all of Camp Carroll, including BEQ Hill.
Ahead of this, the US military must apologize to the Korean side for covering up the results of the investigation and fully reveal the results of their investigations until now.
Now, I’m not sure how the two papers obtained the US military reports in question, but I, too, was able to obtain them… by using Google:
- Draft Report for Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study at Bachelor’s Enlisted Quarters (BEQ) Hill of Camp Carroll, Korea
- Draft Report for Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study at Area 41 of Camp Carroll, Republic of Korea
I coudn’t find the actual documents at the Army Corps of Engineers homepage, but the fact that I could find those draft reports via Google does make me wonder just how secret USFK was keeping this information.
*****
Few things sadder than a DeLorean involved in an accident.
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The controversy over last weekend’s KBS documentary on Korean War general Paik Sun-yup continues. Look, this probably deserves a much longer post — with translations of the relevant articles — than I have time for now. The editor-in-chief of the online edition of the Kyunghyang posted a column on the issue last night which, IMHO, does a good job of summarizing the beef some people have with Paik.
I didn’t see the documentary, and what I know of it, I mostly gleaned from critical news stories about it. As a matter of principle, I belief if you’re going to do a documentary on a historical figure (even a living one), you need to tell the whole story, and with Paik, there’s no way you cannot discuss his experience in the Gando Special Force. And yeah, while I understand Paik’s counter-insurgency efforts around Mt. Jirisan were conducted much more humanely — and much more effectively — than those conducted before him, which were characterized by things like this, counter-insurgency is always nasty business, and one needs to be honest about that.
What I dislike with the debate about Paik — who I do regard as a war hero — is that the historical viewpoint from which much of the criticism of Paik comes seems just as shallow and one-sided. I don’t like the communists, but given the ideological currents of the age and the social problems that plagued Korea post-Liberation, I can certainly understand how many might have turned to it. This, I’m sure many in the progressive camp will agree with. The same, however, goes for the guys who collaborated with the Japanese. To me, in fact, their actions are even more understandable than Korean War-era communist partisans — they collaborators can at least say they were serving their legal government, and as bad as the Japanese might have been, if given a choice, I’d chose Imperial Japan over North Korea each and every time.
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{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
Never trust a Canadian cow.
Paik Sun-yup is a war hero. Can’t they just leave him alone? Yes, he was a part of the Japanese Manchurian army, but Koreans back then had so little choices during the colonial era.
2 WangKon936, you are correct. The choice was often obey or die. Kim Il Sung and all the glorious anti-Japanese insurgents were crushed inside of Korea. A few like KIS were able to escape and continute the fight in China under Chinese leadership, those who stayed were destroyed.
Kim Il Sung worked under Chinese leadership? Since when?
shit. it posted for some reason.
Anyway, I’m wondering. I’m not trying to be snarky. I was always under the impression that KIS was working with the Russians.
Well, I don’t think that’s true, either. Most probably didn’t have much of a choice but to tacitly collaborate, but that’s a far cry from joining the Gando Special Force. Paik clearly had a choice, and made it. What I find interesting is that I’d be willing to bet dollars-to-donuts that most of the people complaining about the 미화ing of Paik Sun-yup would have no problem 미화’ing and romanticizing the post-Liberation and Korean War partisans who were fighting for a cause that ultimately produced a result even more objectionable than Japanese imperialism.
I think it’s also important to remember that we’re talking about a time when the ideological marketplace of ideas was much more diverse. In hindsight, we can see how fascism, communism and imperialism turned out, but in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, things weren’t so clear. Paik might have fought with the Japanese with the conviction he was making his country a better place, as I’m sure the North Koreans and partisans did during the Korean War.
Chiamatt,
Read Kim Il Sung by Dr. Suh Dae-Sook. I don’t have a copy handy at the moment but from memory Kim Il Sung’s group was forced out of Korea proper by the Japanese and fell under the leadership of a larger Chinese based and led partisan army.
The Soviets actually tried to place their own man in charge of North Korea but Kim Il Sung had much more support, was better known and had his partisans take over the security apparatus.
Dr. Suh was able to peel back a lot of the mythology on both left and right about the war by investigating source documents in Russia when the glasnost policy was in effect. He also used Japanese source documents. KIS was a guerilla leader and wanted by the Japanese but he was not operating in Korea for long. Everyone who did was either captured or killed for the most part.
re: [Where are the candles now?]
Lucky for Canada that Korea will buy their beef again.
But geez! I don’t trust those damn Canadians, since they still produce and export the worlds supply of ASBESTOS and send it to countries such as India, where it is handled improperly and causes lots of sickness to people around the world.
shame on Canada!
“The Soviets actually tried to place their own man in charge of North Korea but Kim Il Sung had much more support, was better known and had his partisans take over the security apparatus. ”
From what I read KIS was selected by the Soviets precisely because he was relatively unknown, lacked much domestic support, and was actually considered by the Soviets to lack personal charisma. The Soviets saw KIS as someone who would be dependent on them and carry out their interests.
This is from Wikipedia:
Stalin realized he needed someone to head a puppet regime. He asked Lavrenty Beria to recommend possible candidates. Beria met Kim several times before recommending him to Stalin. It is widely believed that Kim was selected over several more qualified candidates because he had no ties to the native Communist movement.[11]
Kim arrived in North Korea on 22 August after 26 years in exile. According to Leonid Vassin, an officer with the Soviet MVD, Kim was essentially “created from zero.” For one, his Korean was marginal at best; he’d only had eight years of formal education, all of it in Chinese. He needed considerable coaching to read a speech the MVD prepared for him at a Communist Party congress three days after he arrived. They also systematically destroyed most of the true leaders of the resistance who ended up north of the 38th parallel.[11]
11.Becker, Jasper (2005). Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019517044X.
dokdoforever, you are probably correct. I’m a long way away from my library.
My faulty memory recalls an ethnic Korean raised in the Soviet Union that the Soviets brought along with them but was rejected by the homegrown communists. He may not have been as important as I seem to remember.
Dr. Suh did establish that Kim Il Sung was a well known “freedom fighter” but there was some conspiracy theories that there was an older man who actually was the partisan and KIS assumed many of his exploits. Regardless from the Japanese records there was a KIS that they were trying to hunt down, kill or capture.
I’ve only seen the first half of the documentary (“기억의 파편을 찾아서/Recovering the Shards of Memory”) and also read a number of critical stories about before watching it. Based off of what I saw from the first half, I think these critical articles are off base.
These articles give the impression that this documentary is about Gen. Paik per se. And indeed the KBS team who produced it may have initially set out to do that. Watching what they put together for the first half of the documentary, however, I think they pretty much failed in that regard. Fact is, I didn’t get the impression that this was a documentary about the life and times of Gen. Paik, but rather his memories/retrospective on the Korea War; or a remembering/retrospective of the Korean War in general. Frankly, I was surprised how little he appeared throughout the first half that I watched. If any of you have a chance to watch it, they spend considerable time interviewing Chinese and British veterans and their experiences during the war, go into some rather frankly boring expositions about battlefield and tactical machinations, and show a lot of old photos and newsreels that Gen. Paik provides commentary on (Side note: for a 91 year old guy, he speaks with unbelievable clarity).
Long story short, if KBS had indeed set out to pull a “백선엽 ‘전쟁영웅’ 만들기” stunt, you’d think they’d spend more time on the subject in question. But hey, if KBS needs a model for that, here’s a good one.
However, on the general question of Gen. Paik hero-worshiping and romanticizing, it needs to be remembered that there are critics not only on the left but within the military itself:
Basically, the guy maybe a “hero” or a “traitor.” Whatever side one wants to argue, let’s just try and not lay things on too thickly.
It’s really strange that to prove this point, Hamilton, of all things, brings up the example of Kim Il Sung (i.e. he fled Korea. Thus, the “obey or die” dynamic was in full effect!). Frankly, that’s a pretty ham-handed way to go about things. If the question is why did people collaborate, you should probably read about the collaborators themselves. Thus one should probably talk about the 이완용’s or the 박정희’s of the world in order to make a more robust point.
But of course, reading about just even those two people clearly indicates that the “obey or die” dynamic is tenuous at best. Mark Caprio’s Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 offers some interesting insights on this matter also (See especially the opening paragraphs of the introduction).
Odds n Ends – Today Seoul city traffic was snarled during demonstration, some Workers United Org. during the hours of 4:30 p.m. – ?. The criminals walked down or taking one lane on several streets around Seoul. They’d been gathering at the bell across from the ugly Samsung building in Jongno this past week. Earlier in the week there was an Anti-FTA sign but it wasn’t on display or the focus as of late although I’m sure they’re against it. Police were on site, must’ve been an illegal demonstration.
“The choice was often obey or die.”
Charles, we will have to add the word often to the list of words you don’t understand and it’s a pretty long list at this point. Wouldn’t it be easier not to build strawmen and sensationalize/editorialize other’s points and just contribute to a discussion without being an ass?
Under the Black Umbrella and Lost Names are decent works that will give you the feel for living under Imperial Japan. Another good source is Colonial Modernity in Korea.
In Korea under the occupation the Korean Language was not used in radio, telegraph, or newspapers, Koreans were forced to take Japanese names, were required to have Shinto shrines, and were at times inducted into the Imperial Army at High School Graduation. They had no idea even in 1944 for the most part that the US and Allies were defeating the Japanese. Forced labor was common and the vast majority of partisan forces had been killed, captured, or forced to flee Korea proper.
Under these conditions the choice was often obey or die either from starvation or outright execution.
Alright, let’s make us of that word. It still doesn’t detract from my point about your ham-handed utilization of Kim Il Sung as evidence of the “often obey or die” mechanism for getting Koreans to collaborate. Moreover, and to repeat for you again since you didn’t pick it up the first time obviously, if you want to study the actual reasons for why certain Koreans collaborated you should probably study the collaborators themselves (why this is so hard for you understand is frankly inexplicable).
Fact of the matter is, when you look at the lives of those individuals, it becomes pretty clear that even with the word “often” attached to your “obey or die” idea, it clearly wasn’t just that. Moreover, 김영미 in her study of community associations set up during Japanese colonial rule like the 정회(町會) show that things didn’t exactly operate in the way your “often obey or die” schema would suggest. Her basic point is that the organizations offered a degree autonomy that Koreans and Japanese alike participated in.
See “해방직후 정회(町會)를 통해 본 도시 기층사회의 변화 [Transformation of the urban basic society right after the liberation of Korea approached through the Chunghoe], 역사와현실 Vol. 35, 2000.3 or take a look at the book that she wrote based off of that article. Chapters 1-3 should nicely explode your “often obey or die” contention and hence the idea that that’s what Gen. Paik was faced with.
Charles you are still brilliant at making strawmen.
I never said that was the only reason. So no, you don’t nice explode anything. Please read Under the Black Umbrella before you continue to make an ass out of yourself. Koreans were under a full spectrum of motivations to collaborate, I never denied that. Some of it was quite lethal either through starvation or more traditional methods. The overall context of life under the Japanese is that many didn’t see any other choice.
You still don’t do very well with opposing views do you?
In the preface of Under the Black Umbrella, author Hildi Kang described how in-laws’ recollections of ordinary, everyday life didn’t fit with colonial life as retold in history books or biographies of modern patriots. She noted that “some people, some of the time, led normal lives.” The book’s many narratives are organized into two sections: “Change by Choice” and “Change by Coercion.” I don’t think any of us who weren’t alive in Korea during the period of Japanese annexation can surmise with confidence what choices and consequences Paik faced.
I know. You said it’s what “often” happened. And I threw that little concession to you to make you happy. Even with that though, there’s quite a bit of scholarly work out there the indicates that it wasn’t-contra your argument-”often” the case. So I did nicely explode your “often” notion as well.
I did. So perhaps then you’ll take the time to read some of the things I provided so you don’t continue to make an ass out of yourself.
That first sentence is good. No feeling with regards to the second. But the third one just makes you look like a backtracking, confused individual. So what is it? Collaboration due to a full spectrum of motivations or that “overall…many didn’t see any other choice” but to collaborate? The notions behind the first sentence and the one behind the third run smack into each other.
BTW, saying that these individuals had considerably more freedom in choosing whether to collaborate or not doesn’t mean that I think they’re bad people or unworthy of any sort of praise or respect had they “collaborated.” I do think that Gen. Paik is an exceptional man. But there’s the rub: he’s a man, a human being with flaws and warts like other historical figures. Especially from this era in modern Korean history. Simply to wave away an unsightly aspect of his past by simply saying “overall there wasn’t any other choice” just indicates a desire not to take a serious measure of the man. I mean, if you want a “hero” go to the comic book section of your local bookstore.
Sonagi,
Good points. I wrote a paper on collaboration a number of years ago when the Korean Government was attempting to locate collaborator families and determine if they had profited from their activities. As you may recall some of the investigators were embarrassed to find out they had relatives, some quite close (a father/uncle) that had been police working for the Japanese.
I realized rather quickly that it was nearly impossible to determine individual motivations unless individuals left significant writings covering their feelings from the era. Even then some of it was suspect, some families kept pretty deep secrets.
Charles,
Another great set of arguments I didn’t make. Keep twisting, it’s what you do best. You seriously lack social skills.
Paik Sun Yup is a hero though, you got that dead wrong. Personal courage: check, selfless service: check, unbridled optimism: check and a lifetime of service to Korea. He has paid his dues and this national treasure won’t be around much longer. I won’t wave away any unsightly thing he has done but I will give credit where credit is due.
Interesting. But not so impossible so as to make the arguments in comments #3 and 15.
Which one? Christ, I even conceded one to you (granted, it was shot down though).
The things are not so simple dichotomy. Kim Il-Sung, the 혹부리영감, appointed Jap(쪽)-collaborators to government positions.
KIS did not hesitate hire collaborators to sustain his regime.
Why can’t progressive Koreans leave former Pro-Japanese sympathizer Koreans alone? A good number of them did join North Korea after all. In the South, one such sympathizer, whom I need not name, even vitalized the Korean economy (though you may disagree with his human rights policies).
@24: Nice blog you have there, kuiwon.
I strongly agree with Slim. Nice blog indeed, Kuiwon.
kuiwon,
If you haven’t found it yet, there’s a nice free, lengthy, English-language primer on Classical Chinese available for download here:
http://gkarin.com/cikoski/
Might be of some use to your project.
Thank you to both. I’ll certainly take a look at that primer that you have linked here. Right now, I’m using what I remember from my Classical-Chinese literate relatives’ informal lessons and the few Korean-language Classical Chinese grammar books I have.
I always find it ironic when you juxtapose progressive attitudes vis-a-vis collaborators with Imperial Japan and collaborators with North Korea. Progressive should be more concerned about who in their ranks are currently sympathizing and collaborating with the occupying power in the North as opposed to whose ancestors did what for the Japanese. In the latter case, there was a range of motivations to explain collaboration, as Hamilton, Sonagi, et al have pointed out. In the former case, supporters are acting entirely of their own volition. The real traitors in Korean history are those who happily wear (in secret or otherwise) the portrait badge of Kim Il Sung.
Regarding Kim Il Sung’s (that is, Kim Song Ju’s) role as a Korean “patriot:” I thought the consensus was that he was a minor figure in the anti-Japanese movement at best and that there were several individuals during that period who assumed the nom-de-guerre Kim Il Sung. IIRC, only one or two raids could be attributed to him.
Does anyone know of any good online Chinese character to Hangul resources? It would be fun to learn more hanja.
dokdoforever,
http://hanja.naver.com/ is a good resource.
Also, if you have an iPhone you can download a free app called 한자공부Q. It’s a flashcard program that allows you to practice 27,000 한자, organized by difficulty level.
An interesting aside about Paik was that he was a key patron of Park Chung-hee’s rise up through the military ranks and factional divisions of the ROKA in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, until Park himself stage his coup in 1961. In fact, the senior officers backing the 1961 coup were all from the Northwest/Manchurian faction of the KMA, including both Paik and Chang To-yong.
But long before 1961, it was Paik who expunged Park’s record as an early communist and card-carrying member of the South Korean Workers’ Party. (How many folks know that?) In fact. Park was initially sentenced to death for his KWP membership, and for allegedly providing weapons to the insurgents behind the Yosu-Sunchon rebellion of October 1948. Again, it was Paik who was instrumental in clearing Park of the charges.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
DLB
milton wrote:
I do not want to compare them. Both atrocious Jap-collaborator and NK Kim-Il-Sung are traitors of Koreans. I admit that not all Jap-collaborators were malicious. I do not want to blame them. But anybody who committed brutality to their brethren should be put in justice. In that sense, NK Kim Il-Song and some Jap-collaborators are traitors in the same category.
@DLB:
Gen. Paik’s role in rehabilitating Park following the Yosu-Suncheon Incident is indeed interesting. Although, I hasten to add that while Paik’s help in this regard may have been a necessary condition, it wasn’t necessarily a sufficient condition for Park’s full rehabilitation in the eye’s of ROK officialdom. No, if anything truly sealed the deal for Park’s full rehabilitation, it was his faithful service to the Republic of Korea during the Korean War that did it. If you recall, even after receiving relatively favorable treatment at the hands of the authorities, Park essentially was living the life of a dead-ender. Come the war, however, thing would change drastically for him and there would be no looking back. According to 박명림:
CT,
There is no doubt that Park’s achievements prior to and during the Korean War were crucial to his rehabilitation. But it doesn’t stop there.
Recall that throughout the post-Korean War 1950s, Park’s career was a checkered one. After he reached the rank of brigadier general, his career stalled. It was Paik who cleared his record of all leftist activities after the War, and it was Paik who in 1958 arranged for him to be promoted to major general even after a group of Park’s subordinates defected to the North in 1956 to protest the rigged election of Rhee Syngman, and after 50+ men in his division died in an avalanche that same year, and after a massive fire broke out in a logistics depot under his command.
Any one of these incidents could have ended his career. Paik was instrumental in resurrecting his tarnished image after each one.
DLB
Thanks Milton – that’s pretty cool. I like the way you can write the character on the screen. That sounds like a cool ap for iphone. Wish I had an i-phone!
dokdoforever, If you can read Korean fairly well, I would also recommend reading Chinese Classics that have both the original text (+현토) and the Korean translation side by side with annotations. You can find these online and at most Korean bookstores, in the Eastern philosophies section.
Also for Android there is an app called 급수별 한자학습. It contains all of the characters on the 한자능력시험.
Now here’s something you don’t read every day: the manager of the North Korean woman’s soccer team says lightning, which struck several of their teams players, was the likely cause of their loss to the U.S. team in the Women’s World Cup. (Not, you know, because the U.S. women’s soccer team is actually just a lot better.)
News that N Korea is closing down ALL of its universities?!
Looks as though N Korea is very stubbornly resisting any market based economic reform. This is more of the same: mass mobilization of labor, like the ‘chollima’ movement – and it will predictably fail, as all ‘labor instensification’ strategies have previously.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20110630144003329
NORTH KOREA: Learning stops as students sent to work
Yojana Sharma
30 June 2011
Close watchers of North Korean affairs were caught on the hop this week by reports that universities in the hermit kingdom would be closed from 27 June for up to 10 months while students are sent to work on farms, in factories and in construction.
Diplomats in Pyongyang confirmed that students were being drafted into manual labour on the outskirts of the city until April next year to prepare for major celebrations to commemorate the centenary of the late leader Kim Il Sung’s birthday. But they said this did not mean the closure of universities.
Reports originating in South Korea and Japan suggested that the Pyongyang government had ordered universities to cancel classes until April next year, exempting only students graduating in the next few months and foreign students.
The reports said the students would be put to work on construction projects in major cities and on other works in a bid to rebuild the economy. This could indicate that the country’s food crisis and economic problems are worse than previously thought.
Experts on North Korea said full-scale university closures would be unprecedented. However, it was not unusual for students to be engaged in manual labour, with the academic year sometimes shortened in order to send students onto farms and construction sites.
Peter Hughes, British Ambassador to North Korea, told University World News by email from Pyongyang: “There has been no official announcement in DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] about university students being sent to carry out manual labour for the next 10 months, but I can confirm that students from all the universities in Pyongyang have been mobilised to work at construction sites in the outskirts of the city until April 2012.
“Some two years ago the DPRK announced that it would build 200,000 units of accommodation in the city to ease the chronic housing shortage. To date only some 10,000 units have been built, so the students have been taken out of universities in order to speed up the construction of the balance before major celebrations take place in April 2012 to commemorate the 100th birthday of the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung.”
Universities are not closed as lecturers and postgraduate and foreign students remain on campuses, Hughes said on Thursday.
“The UK has an English language teacher training programme at three universities in Pyongyang. The mobilisation of the students should not affect this programme as the majority of activity is focused upon teacher development and not teaching students.”
Charles Armstrong, Director of the Centre for Korea Research at Columbia University who returned from Pyongyang earlier last week, said he had visited two state-run universities, Kim Il Sung University and Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang, as well as the private Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) in the last few weeks.
At the two public universities the vast majority of students were not present, Armstrong told University World News. “It is also a very busy time for rice transplanting and you see a lot of young people in the fields.”
However, students were studying as normal at PUST, a postgraduate institution funded by Korean-American and South Korean philanthropists that teaches mainly engineering.
“It is very hard to get information in and out of the country and there may be some confusion because every summer students have to go down to the fields to help with the rice planting. It is not the first time that I have heard reports that universities have shut down for a period,” Armstrong said.
“My impression is that there is not a lot going on in terms of teaching and studying in public universities and student time is taken up with ‘extra curricular’ activities including political education. This is a regular part of university life but I have not heard of the universities being shut down completely except for a short while during the 1990s [famine],” he added.
A major famine and economic crisis in the late 1990s meant that much farm equipment went unused and simply rusted in the fields, so the need for manual labour has grown. Students and army recruits are mobilised to help, often having to travel far from where they live.
“My understanding of the university system is that it is largely dysfunctional. Resources are lacking, many professors spend their time earning from private tuition – so my impression is that it would not make a great deal of difference if they are shut down,” said Armstrong.
Aidan Foster-Carter, a writer and researcher on North Korea, formerly at Leeds University in England, said: “North Korea sets great store by these anniversaries. They decreed a few years ago that 2012 would be their date for becoming a great and prosperous nation defined in economic terms. It would make sense having extra persons out there to help with construction, though normally it is the army that does it.”
But any mass use of student labour for longer than the summer vacation months would mean a trade-off against achieving economic goals that required educated workers, he said.
“North Korea’s is a strange and broken economy but they also need educated people to pull them out and it would be a major precedent to close the universities. It could be a sign that they are in a worse mess than we thought.”
Hazel Smith, professor of security and resilience at Cranfield University who also lectures at Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung University, said North Korean universities were operating as usual in and outside the capital when she was there in May.
She said it would be counterproductive for the regime to close universities. Despite huge labour shortages throughout the country, the regime is “fully aware that people need to be taught IT and technology and of course nuclear [engineering].
“They are dependent to fulfill their economic goals on people who are computer literate and engaged in advanced science. I don’t think [closures] will last very long. There are too many other priorities to deal with.”
Analysts in Japan and South Korea suggested there could be other reasons behind the decision to disperse the students across the country, including the possibility of demonstrations at campuses inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, which began at universities.
They noted that North Korea had purchased anti-riot equipment from China in recent months, including tear gas and batons, while there has been an increased police presence at key points in Pyongyang in recent weeks.
Foster-Carter said North Korea watchers have been closely monitoring for signs of unrest since the spring, but there had not been any.
“The amount of information from the Middle East reaching the ordinary citizen is very, very limited and there has been nothing at all in the official media,” Armstrong said. “There has been no student unrest that we know of for the last 50 years.”
According to North Korea analysts, party controls are in place to prevent student uprisings, including political indoctrination and strong surveillance. Some analysts said surveillance on campuses had relaxed in recent years because many party officials had not been paid.
However, experts agreed that the possibility of universities being shut would be an ominous sign of tension. “The most likely reason [to shut universities down completely] would be for military mobilisation if they thought they were going to be attacked,” Smith said.
Related links
NORTH KOREA: University events raising tensions
NORTH KOREA: First international university opens
NORTH KOREA: University opens students to the world
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