"Beyond the Border: North Korea" event

Sunday, Feb. 17
Tae Guk Gi movie screening
UNC Murphey 116 @ 7PM
Korean snacks & drinks provided

Monday, Feb. 18
Part 1: Speaker presentation
UNC Great Hall @ 6PM
Korean dinner provided

Tuesday, Feb. 19
Part 2: Speaker presentation
Duke TBD @ 6PM
Korean dinner provided

Event details:

A North Korean defector Kim Hyun-sik is to speak at Carolina on Monday, February 18, and at Duke on Tuesday, February 19 for a Vision for North Korea two-night event. On Sunday, February 17, the Korean film Tae Guk Gi will be shown on UNC’s campus to jumpstart the whole joint event.

Kim Hyun-sik is currently a professor at George Mason University. He was a visiting professor at Yale University for three years, specializing in teaching North Korea. Before Kim defected, he assumed a prestigious role in North Korea as one of country’s top educators. He was a personal tutor to the former dictator, Kim Sung Il, and tutored his young nephew. In the late 1980s, Kim Hyun-sik was given authoritative leave to study in the former Soviet Union; he is fluent in Russian. This stage in his life coincides with history because this was during the Cold War, when there was great tension between the democratic and communist states of the world; it would have benefited North Korea much as a newly-emerged communist nation to have its intellectuals learn the Russian language, the Soviet Union being the communist superpower at the time. After stepping outside of North Korea, Kim realized the totalitarian nation’s bizarreness and eventually defected from the country, took refuge in South Korea, and immigrated to the United States. His story is not this simple, of course. Kim will tell us his in-depth life story at UNC and Duke, so we can closely examine North Korea from his unique position.

In order for audiences to hear the entire presentation, attendees will have to come to UNC on Monday night and to Duke on Tuesday night, thereby creating a very joint event between our schools. Kim will not tell his entire story at either school, but present half of his testimony at UNC and the concluding half at Duke. (A hired translator will translate from Korean to English). Time will be set aside at the end of each presentation to give audience members the opportunity to donate money to Pastor Buck’s cause to save Korean refugees in China. Our schools’ combined goal is to draw 400 audience members and raise a combined total of $5,000 for donation. We expect university students and staff, and people from the surrounding community to attend as we have already notified major humanitarian organizations in the Triangle.

The speaker presentation at UNC on Monday night will be held in the Great Hall in banquet style. We will have Korean dinner catered from Chosunok, a Korean restaurant in the area. We want this event to be just as enjoyable as it is educational and humanitarian. And we all know that food encourages attendance, which valuably means for us that the truth is spread to more people. A greater number of people will also help us to achieve the goal of $5,000. Duke will similarly provide a banquet setting for the second night of the presentation.

The connectedness and banquet style of the event is specifically designed to benefit both university students in terms of scholarship. We could have organized the event so students need only to attend the presentation of their respective school to hear the entire presentation. However, we made it a continued presentation in order to bring UNC students and Duke students together—providing the grounds for topical dialogue between students of differing university atmospheres, mindsets, and cultures. We hope the dinner banquet setting instead of the lecture hall setting will naturally foster interaction. For our organizations, an element of collaboration will be birthed to strengthen projects in the future with combined efforts.

One question that students may ask is—how could North and South Korea, countries that formed only several decades ago by people of the same ethnicity, be entirely different? That is why on Sunday night before the first night of the speaker presentation, UNC’s chapter will screen the Korean War film Tae Guk Gi. Students will learn of the country’s historical split into a North and South. Individually-wrapped Korean snacks will be provided to couple a cultural experience with the reception of historical knowledge. After the movie, students will have the opportunity to ask questions and learn facts that will aid their understanding of today’s North Korea. For example, there was no peace treaty made after the Korean War—only a ceasefire. To this day North and South Korea remain enemies and are technically at war, producing between them the most militarily fortified DMZ in the world. This explains why North Koreans have to escape through China, and we better understand the refugee situation. Every part of this event is crucial.

JSH