Co-evolution of networks and discourses: a case from North Korean defector-activists

ABSTRACT

This article uses an eclectic approach of network and discourse analyses to examine symbiotic relations between the formation of professional networks and the constitution of normative discourses in international affairs. Based on more than 2000 English and Korean mixed materials about the five most-mentioned North Korean defector-activists in the media in 1998–2015, and assisted by a computer-based content analysis tool, the author demonstrates how each of those five defector-activists has employed their endogenous identities to join the system of international human rights activism and offered legitimate narratives for the campaigns against North Korea, while forming transnational networks in South Korea, the USA and the UK. She argues that individuals’ endogenous identities and agency are critical for shaping normative discourses in international human rights activism against North Korea in the first instance, which then grow exponentially through transnational networks formed by individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• discourse
• human rights
• network
• North Korea

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Edward Baker, Roland Bleiker, Sandra Fahy, Andrew Yeo, Danielle Chubb and Markus Bell for reading earlier versions of this article and providing extremely helpful comments. She would also like to thank Lee Jin Young for her research assistance and those who were interviewed for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Jiyoung Song is a director of migration and border policy at the Lowy Institute, Sydney, Australia and the author of Human Rights Discourses in North Korea: Post-colonial, Marxist and Confucian Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2010). She can be reached via [email protected].

Notes

1. The names used here are all pseudonyms used by the North Koreans themselves. The article follows the Korean naming system—i.e. surnames followed by first names (for example, Shin Dong Hyuk). English names follow the English naming system (for example, Joseph Kim). When they arrive in South Korea, they have to go through a three-month joint interrogation by the South Korean intelligence service, police and military, and another three-month resettlement program under the Ministry of Unification. During this process, most, if not all, North Koreans change their names, and often their ages, to hide their identity. The problems and difficulties faced by North Korean arrivals in South Korea are covered by Lankov (2006).

2. This was on a radio program, Son Sok Hee’s Sison Chipjung (Focus), on August 15, 2003.

3. See UK North Korean Residents Society at http://nkrs.org.uk (accessed December 10, 2016).

4. Personal interviews with Kim Joo Il, London, June 2014.

5. Personal interview with Park Ji Hyun, London, January 14, 2016.

6. The discourses exclude all pronouns, prepositions and auxiliary verbs.

7. A number of North Korea experts, including Yoon Yeo Sang, recount that Shin was very insistent on publishing a memoir as soon as he was out of the resettlement centre in Seoul in 2005, which was quite unusual for a 25-year-old North Korean man who came alone to South Korea without any family or friends.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Korea Foundation and the Ministry of Education, Singapore [grant number C242/MSS15S001].