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North Korean wartime literature has never been valued highly by literary scholars. The lack of literary qualities in these wartime stories have deterred many from looking more seriously at this type of literature as its heroes, seemingly without any obstacles in their way, defeat the enemy and attain victory. Add this to the subservient role literature plays in North Korea and the worship of its leaders, and it is obvious why one would shy away from analysing these texts.

However, even under such conditions of prescribed rules and top-down directives, the writer still needs to imbue the story with sufficient literary qualities to make it interesting to its readers. This is because the author is still constrained by the fact that the novel should not stray too far from reality or else the reader will not be persuaded. The author, therefore, also needs to address issues that are politically and socially sensitive in society. Condemnation of these issues in itself is not enough: to make an ideological claim the issue needs to be foregrounded, and the author must give a satisfactory interpretation of the issue.

This led to the creation of quite interesting propaganda literature in wartime North Korea: The characters are imbued with heroic but down-to-earth characteristics that portray both the wartime experiences of North Korean soldiers and citizens, but also gives expression to North Korea’s wartime concerns.

Jerôme de Wit is Professor in the Korean Studies department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is a specialist on North and South Korean Wartime Literature and modern Korean culture. His research interest in Korean culture is focused on public discourses concerning history and society and how cultural sources can provide us with different viewpoints on debates such as nationalism, identity, and history. His recent projects deal with such topics as post-colonialism in contemporary South Korean alternate history novels, and a study on the representation and changes in identity in the literature and movies of ethnic Koreans in China.

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In late 2016, South Korea saw a series of Internet-born street protests demanding that then-President Park Geun-hye step down, eventually leading to her impeachment in March of 2017. These candlelight protests were only the newest iteration of the youth-driven candlelight protest that originated online in 2002, which has now become a standard repertoire for activism. Drawing on Kang’s recent book Igniting the Internet (2016), this presentation attends to the cultural dynamics that allowed the Internet to so rapidly bring issues to public attention and exert influence on South Korea’s domestic and international politics. Kang will discuss the cultural dynamics of online politics and media-driven popular politics, situating them in the legacies of South Korea’s authoritarian and post-authoritarian eras. This presentation will consider the interplay among local historical context, structural variation across different societies, and the role of chance in the dynamics of mass movements and the “cultural ignition process”—speculating about the future of Internet-driven youth activism in South Korea and beyond.

Jiyeon Kang is an associate professor of Communication Studies and Korean Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include South Korean social movements, Internet activism, youth culture, globalization, and the mobility of Asian university students.