The March 2017 session of the “Seoul Colloquium in Korean Studies,” organized jointly by the Seoul Center of the ÉFEO and RAS Korea, will be held on Thursday March 30 in the Grand Conference Room (Room number 310), of the Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University, beginning at 5:30 pm. March Presentations 1. “North Korea in Numbers: Reading its History through Quantitative Data"Presented by Martin Weiser, MA at Korea University in 2014 with a thesis on changes and improvements in North Korea's human rights policy. Since that year he also taken a course in literature translation at LTI Korea and continued researching North Korea. While North Korea is often described as a black box impossible to know and understand, in the last decades a wealth of materials has become available ranging from diplomatic documents to testimonies and last but not least North Korea's own publications leading to a surge in research. Quantitative data available on North Korea often even provided by North Korea itself, however, has still remained understudied and, even where it was occassionally used, has not been fully analyzed yet. This is especially worrisome as quantitative data has the potential to give more objective insights into changes not otherwise acknowledged or announced by the regime. Building on four years of in-depth review of North Korean studies and available primary sources, I will offer a new look on what available quantitative data tells us about developments in North Korea. These new insights are very concrete in several fields. For census research, for example, official North Korean data reveals shifting trends in marriage and divorce so far unnoticed, while secret statistics even hint at discriminatory resettlements to poorer provinces. Important changes also become visible in North Korean economy and law through quantitative data and even an approach as simple as quantitative content analysis, i.e. word counting, yields important results for North Korea's daily newspapers. Eventually, taking North Korean numbers more serious also opens a new path to understand a range of other fields from the development of its printing and cultural sector, expansion of education and tourism, but also the changes of North Korea's ruling party.  2. “Social and cultural integration of North Korean migrants in South Korea” Presented by In-Jin Yoon, professor of the Department of Sociology, Korea University . The large-scale entry of North Korean migrants to South Korea took place in the mid-1990s and the settlement of North Korean migrants has been in progress for twenty years. As their number and duration of residence have increased, there is a growing consensus among researchers that North Korean migrants should be approached from the integration perspective rather than the adaptation perspective. If the adaptation perspective focuses on the provision and securement of material base of adaptation, the integration perspective underscores material as well as mental incorporation of migrants into host society. For this reason, I propose the index of social and integration of North Korean migrants and examine their level of integration by using the index. The index has two sets of indicators; one set of systemic integration as measured by employment, education, housing, and health, and another set of value integration as measured by a sense of belonging, trust, and multicultural acceptance. When we review the existing literature on North Korean migrants, we can conclude that North Korean migrants are not well integrated into Korean society in terms of both system and value. They have enormous difficulties in finding employment and securing income for decent living and their physical and mental health are in poor conditions. Also, they face prejudice and discrimination simply because they came from North Korea and deteriorating inter-Korea relations affect their images and life changes negatively. They tend to hide their identity in fear of being stigmatized and alienated. For their successful integration, their human capital should be upgraded through education and training, and perceptions and behaviors of ordinary South Koreans toward North Korean migrants should be changed in a positive direction through multicultural education and anti-discrimination law.

 séoul colloquium in korean studies