'Sex, Drugs and Rock‘n’Roll in North Korea' Seminar and Opening of 'The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea' Photo Exhibition
REPORT
Sex, Drugs and Rock‘n’Roll in North Korea Seminar and Opening of The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea Photo Exhibition
The Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (CCS) Research Centre at UTS presented a free joint North Korea seminar and photo exhibition opening on Tuesday, 19 August 2014.
A highlight of the seminar was the participation of two North Korean students who have received scholarship to study English at UTS Insearch under the 'UTS: INSEARCH Scholarship for Former North Korean Students'.
The Lives of Others: New Perspectives on North Korea exhibition presents photographs of everyday life in North Korea, aiming to showcase the 'human face' of North Korea amid often sensationalised, caricatured and unbalanced media reportage. It is open til the end of October on level 4 in the UTS Library.
The workshop and exhibition were cooperatively funded by the Australian Research Council, UTS' Centre for Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (CCS) and The Toyota Foundation. The joint event is connected to an ARC Discovery grant titled 'North Korea's Quiet Transformation: Women in the Rise of the Informal Market'. This is the first major research project to investigate the role played by women in the emergence of a nascent capitalist economy in North Korea, and one on which the featuring panellists are chief investigators.
With North Korea rarely receiving coverage beyond media sensationalism, this seminar and exhibition event provided a revealing and rarely seen glimpse into North Korea, its culture and the everyday lives of its citizens.