This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Meredith Shaw. They speak about how the North Korean regime deals with and re-interprets “messages” from other countries and international institutions, what the state-produced literature that deals with this messaging looks like, the three main types of these foreign messaging interactions: 1. Economic sanctions. 2. Summit diplomacy. 3. Military exercises/fleet movements, how the Korean Writer’s Union (as a part of the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department) directs North Korean fiction in this regard, how the North Korean regime uses these messages to their internal advantage through fiction, and what type of external messaging is hardest for Pyongyang to spin.  

Meredith Shaw is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo and the managing editor of Social Science Japan Journal. Meredith has worked as a research associate and translator at the Korean Institute of National Unification, and her current research focuses on the analysis of North Korean literature. Her ongoing blog on North Korean literature is available at http://dprklit.blogspot.com/

*** The Korea Now Podcast #36 – Meredith Shaw – ‘The Strong and Prosperous Nation - Understanding North Korea through its literature’ (https://korea-now-podcast.libsyn.com/the-korea-now-podcast-36-meredith-shaw-the-strong-and-prosperous-nation-understanding-north-korea-through-its-literature).

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