Risky Networks: Subverting block chain technology and intellectual property in millennial North Korea

We live in a hyper-networked world where joining online platforms and entering digital transactions play a pivotal role in spinning unique dynamics of today’s sociality. But what if our digital interface with the world is limited to few state-sanctioned platforms? What if the most significant transactions we make must take place offline, not online?

This talk explores the unique case of millennial North Korea where the state is anxiously trying to catch up with the world standard of communication technology while also faced with the need to block free influx of outside information. In a country where smuggling foreign media still can be punished by public execution, how do North Koreans manage to access outside information? 

This presentation explores the way in which the expansion of new media technology complicates North Korea’s seemingly monolithic facade mired in entangled networks of technology and surveillance, intellectual property and copyrights, and the way millennials live with censorship and surveillance.

About the speaker

Professor Suk-Young Kim (University of California Los Angeles) is an interdisciplinary scholar with doctoral degrees in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama (Northwestern University, 2005) and Slavic Language and Literature (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2001). 

Her work primarily focuses on body politics, transmedia, entertainment industry, and the historical roots of today’s popular culture. She finds writing inspirations in odd anachronisms and illuminating beauty found in dusty archives, live stages, and today’s vertiginous screen cultures.

Registration

This event free, open to the public and held both in person only. If you would like to attend, please register using the link above.

• Organiser: SOAS Centre of Korean Studies
• Contact: centres@soas.ac.uk

Image credit: toby56 via Unsplash.