The Fieldwork Paradox in North Korea

Presentation by Valérie Gelézeau.

While decades of discussion regarding the politics, praxis and ethics of fieldwork have been engaged by many disciplines in the social sciences, within the field of Korean Studies, those topics are rarely discussed per se. This is particularly true regarding studies in and about North Korea, where the conditions of research and access to materials is such that common knowledge considers impossible the practice of fieldwork. ‘Doing fieldwork in North Korea’, the paragon of a ‘closed context’ (Koch 2013) seems like an ultimate paradox. Yet current debate on fieldwork in the social sciences, as well as the urge to develop a “robust [academic and scientific] engagement” (De Ceuster and Breuker 2013 after Barmé) towards North Korea, and a “thick reading” of this country, renders this discussion an imperative.

This presentation proposes to address the paradox of “doing fieldwork in North Korea”, by challenging a positivist view of what fieldwork is, as something external to be discovered and interpreted. To do so, it will draw on the combined perspective of cultural geography and Korean studies by using the most recent epistemological discussions regarding fieldwork and landscape interpretation in geography on one part, and past experience of study tours or research trips in North Korea, from 2007 to 2013.

Valérie Gelézeau is associate professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris), within the Centre for Korean Studies, and was an affiliated fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden in 2015. Her research addresses the various dimensions of space as a social construct in contemporary Korea, via various perspectives including urban geography, cultural geography, regional geography and geopolitics. She is the author of Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk (“The Republic of Apartments”, Seoul, Humanitas, 2007, a research focusing on the development of apartment complexes in Seoul since the 1970s), Atlas de Séoul (2011, a geographical monograph of Seoul as a megacity) and, with Koen De Ceuster and Alain Delissen, she edited De-bordering Korea. Tangible and intangible legacies of the Sunshine Policy (Routledge 2013).

EHESS webpage: http://crc.ehess.fr/index.php?170

Keywords: North Korea, fieldwork, cultural geography 

Picture: "Monument To Party Foundation" by Stephan -Own work, licenced under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons.

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