Proletarian Intimacies: North Korean Literature and the 'War to Liberate the Fatherland'

How do North Korean writers view their own culture and history? Contemporary North Korean culture and the North Korean state cannot be understood without taking into account the history of Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1910-1945), U.S. and Soviet military occupation (1945-1948), and the Korean War (1950-1953). Professor Theodore Hughes will discuss the ambivalent relation between North Korean literary texts and their colonial proletarian antecedents, the centrality of woman in early North Korean portrayals of national division and the Korean War, and the emergence in North Korea of a powerful and lasting familial bond between the people and the state.

This event takes place at the Columbia Alumni Center, 622 W. 113th St. (Broadway-Riverside), 212-851-7398.