>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:15 >> Daniel Wertz: All right, well thank you all for coming here today to our panel discussion on Primary Source for Research on North Korea. This is organized with the help of the Library of Congress as a part of my organization, The National Committee on North Korea's knowing North Korea workshop for our students and young professionals. And we're very excited to have a really great panel for today talking about the diverse sources that exists for doing primary source research on North Korea. Speaking first will be Sonya Lee who will discuss the Library of Congress' collection of North Korean publications. Sonya is a career reference specialist at the Scholarly Service Section of the Asian Division here at the Library of Congress. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with the Master of Information Science degree and has worked at the Library of Congress since 1995. As the recommending office of the Korean Collection of the Asian Division, Lee has helped to build the Korean Collection of approximately 300,000 volumes of monographs and over 7,600 periodical titles as of today, including 281 serial titles from North Korea. Lee has been especially concerned with increasing the research content of North Korean materials as well as making the collections available through cataloging and outreach. In 2018 this year, she completed a long-term project, the North Korean Serial Index and Database which improve access to North Korea serials and items. The North Korean serials index and database lets researchers and scholars study North Korea in unusually depth. And up next will be Eric Van Slander of the National Archives in reference administration. Eric is reference archivist in the textual reference services division at the National Archives in College Park Maryland where he specializes in records related to World War II, the Allied occupations of Japan and South Korean and the Korean War. Mr. Van Slander has worked at the National Archives in various capacities since 2001. He has bachelors and masters of art degrees in history from the City University of New York City College, a master of library science degree from the University of College Park and he's currently pursuing a doctor of liberal studies degree at Georgetown University. And James Person who'll be speaking about the translated diplomatic documents available from North Korea's former allies and the Eastern Bloc and former Soviet Union is a professor of Korean studies at the John Hopkins School of Advance International Studies. Before join SAIS in 2017, he served as the Founding Director of Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson Center for scholars. Between 2007 and early 2016, he was the founding Coordinator of the Wilson Center's North Korea International Documentation Project where he oversaw the development of a database featuring tens of thousands of declassified documents from the archives of North Korea's former communist allies. Between 2013 and early 2017, he was also Deputy Director of the History and Public Policy Program at the Wilson Center. Person holds a PhD in modern Korean history from the George Washington University. He was also holds an [inaudible] in History from Moscow State University and a BA in history and fine arts from the George Washington University. Person's presently completing the book that explores the transformation of North Korea's political and ideological system between 1953 and 1967. And before we start with the panel, I'd like to introduce Qi Qui whose head of the Scholarly Services Section of the Asian Division at the Library Congress for some introductory remarks. So thank you. Qui. ^M00:04:21 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:25 >> Qi Qui: Thank you Daniel. I'm just here to welcome everyone to the Library of Congress for this on behalf of the Asian Division. It's our pleasure to co-host this panel presentation with our national committee on North Korea as part of the workshop on North Korean research. If you are familiar with the Library of Congress Asian materials, you probably know that here at the Library, the Asian Reading Room is where you can find abundant North Korean materials. And here is just a glimpse of what we have in our rich collection. But if you are not familiar with our resources, no worries, that's pretty much why you are here, right? Our specialist, Sonya Lee will give you an introduction in just a few minutes. So beyond Korean materials, users can also access about four million physical items in over 130 vernacular languages in the Asian Reading Room. The Asian Reading Room is just located in the other side of the building also on the first floor. It-- In addition to physical items, we also offer access to digital materials and users can get research assistant from our special subject specialist. These materials include most subject fields and cover a geographic area ranging from the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia to East Asia. So if you have any questions on using our collections or Reading Rooms, please feel free to talk to me or talk to any of our librarians today or check out our website. And now probably you will not have time to come to our Reading Room after this event today. But I hope in the near future you will be able to come to the library and the Asian Reading Room soon. So, so, Sonya. Thank you. ^M00:06:31 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:35 ^M00:06:40 >> Sonya Lee: Good afternoon. Welcome. My name is Sonya Lee, reference specialist at the Korean Collection, Library of Congress. Once a North Korean scholar told me that I will notice Korean materials is like a playground. And today my job is to help you to figure out how to search around in their playground. And I'll share with you the North Korean research materials at the Library of Congress and help you to figure out how to use it. But before talk-- oops sorry. Before start talking about Koran Collection, let me start with the brief summary of the Korean Collection. 1950, Library start to collect the Korean Material during the Korean War then the Korean unit was only location among the United State government collect the material about Korea. So any recast relate to Korea send to the Korean Unit thus they make a collection equally developed. 1955, the libraries start to use inventory in South Korea to systematically and regularly acquired of contemporary publication. 1966, is the important year for the Korean Collection. The United States and South Korean government signed an exchanged agreement in which the Library start to acquire the government publication in different topic which makes the collection give-- has been. Sorry, has become one of the most significant to strength the Korean Collection. Now, our collection is most extensive and comprehensive collection outside of East Asia. The Library has extensive collections which include a variety of materials such as more than 10,000 items and 281 serials and newspaper from North Korea. Let's get to the main part of the presentation, North Korean Collection. The Library contains one of the largest North Koreas materials in the world especially the one disappeared during the Korean War. The North Korean materials at the Library are one of a kind which may not be available even in North Korea, these makes-- this collection is extremely rare and significant. Also the Library provides the researchers greater access to old and new North Korean materials freely. Because of these reasons, there's a high demand from researchers for access to this materials. When I start working at the Library, I thought it will be straightforward to serve the users with the North Korean materials, but soon I had realized it was anything but straightforward. It was quite complex. So for years since I start working at the Korean Collection, I have worked on a few data basis in order to render better service to our users which include the Korea Serial Database and North Korean Serial Indexing Database. ^M00:09:59 First Korean Serial Database, Korean Serial Database is a friendly powerful reference tool. It provides the researchers detailed information about reaching diverse serials at the Korean Collection. It all start with the warning query. [Inaudible] Korean Serials list please have to receive the same [inaudible] few times. I knew I had to do something about it. Then we use those 10:26 file like this image to serve the users. It was impossible to respond to the recast. So we pull all the Korean serials at the Library. Over 7,000 titles and then we developed the Korean Serial Database by reviewing each title, assign a country code and add a subject by the LC-- phone number and titles in Korean characters. Let's look at one example why Korean Serial Database is powerful reference tool. Chollima this is a frequently used North Korean serial. Probably, you know the title. When you put into record, LC Subjects heading is Korea North Periodicals. As you can see, it is not talking about [inaudible] subject. This is only say this is periodical from North Korea. Korean serial database enable researchers to start using All Field, Korean field-- Korean title and Title, Issuing Body, Publisher, and Newspaper and the Subject Heading which are the value to searching the database. By using Advanced Search, you can limit the search to both Koreas or just North Korea or South Korea. Let's just search serials and technology published just from South Korea. We retrieved the total 175 result. And from this list, let's click one title to get to those short lists. From short list by clicking the LCCN number which is Library Congress Control Number, you can get to the full record. When you have a full record, always make sure go to the bottom to get our full coding information. And now you can get all North Korean serials list with just one click on the browse option because if you remember we review and assign the country code for each serial title. Let's move to the next part of the presentation. Briefly, I like to talk about how to search the books from North Korea. The Library of Congress cataloging record contains approximately 17 million record representing books and serials for cartographic materials, manuscript so forth. It include also 3.2 million records from our all-year database. This record mostly books and procedures and catalogued between 1898 and 1980. We called this record as a PREMARC record. Searching the PREMARC record is much more complex which means when you search the books published before 1980 can be challenging including North Korean materials. Let's see one example. ^M00:13:40 [ Foreign Language ] ^M00:13:44 How do you search this book from North Korea? Let's check its record first. This was the original record which was PREMARC record when I found it accidentally. I could not see any country code. There was not much publication information besides-- published 1975, and then pnjil. Definitely there was a typo. I wonder what was pnjil. So I went to those tags locatable and manually modified this record by adding Kn for North Korea and then correct the typo pnjil, it was ponjil, P-O-N-J-I-L. And then add a publication information from the book published in Pyongyang, Sahoe Kwahak Chulpansa, and changed the whole theme information from General Collection to Asian Collection. Modify record manually, modify the PREMARC record manually since that's the only option we have now. These are some of the common issues of a PREMARC record. Many of them doesn't have a country code or no publication information, not much subject and wrong holding information and wrong spelling and then inconsistent with the spacing practice. So when you're searching for the North Korean book from the Library of Congress Online Catalog, we recommend use these tips to make a search more efficient. First, use advanced search and enter your search term such as a subject and leave a Boolean operator &, and then put the Pyongyang as the publication information. This is very important. Let's see how it works. So we like to retrieve North Korean book on politics and government. Sorry, I have erased all that already. And then enter North Korea as a publication information because we like to get a North Korean book so it's natural, right? Natural reaction, but actually this is a common mistake that user do. So when we did this search, we retrieved all these 13 results which include those three films from North Korea, two films from Japan, four books from South Korea, four books from Washington, D.C. We could not find any book from North Korea from this search. So at this time, we typed the politics and government as a subject and then Pyongyang as a publication information. From this search, we retrieved 275 record and then we found the book, books record we are looking for. So [foreign language]. So please make sure add a Pyongyang as a publication information. Lastly, North Korea Serial Indexing Project, NKSIP. The Asian Division at the Library of Congress has ruled out North Korean serial database online indexing tool. The database offers researchers enhanced access to periodicals and articles published from North Korea. Currently, there are 34,000 article index in 21 North Korean serials. They are now searchable for the first time. In the past, there were no indexing resources at the article level for the North Korean serials anywhere in the world. So without specific bibliographic information, user has to browse numerous titles and issues to find a specific issues, articles they want. Access to index to this historical and cultural material offers insight into the policy, economy, political, social, history, military, legal and financial and government issues that affect the contemporary foreign policy and strategy related to North Korea. We start this project with the following goals, to fill the article level index for the North Korean serials in the Library of Congress and make that index available online for researches and scholars. It is not surprising that more, more graduate students and scholars are taking a deep interest in North Korea because they know they can find a primary source information on Korea-- North Korea at the Library of Congress. So let's give you one example. For example, you are looking for any article or information education in South Korea, you go on over any database like a ProQuest education. You search the education in South Korea. There are over 13,000 search results. Wait for manual research. So you can modify your search or you can use advanced search and narrow down the results. You may find the interesting article and can request article because of citation information. But for the North Korean serials, that was not the case in the past. Now, [inaudible] database let you study North Korea in unusual depths. Provide the range of benefits, you can search, browse, sort and narrow down the result. Researchers can search everything in database or limit to search to article title or subject or article query, publication date and publisher. All user can also browse by author, by subject and serial titles. ^M00:20:01 Selected article can be accessed on site at the library. Subject search, to search by subject, you may enter any term or phrase and choose limit by search or subject. Alternatively, you may select browse by subject. We try the subject search with women and we retrieved a total 1,262 results. You can sort by title, name, date for all searches. Specially dates, sort will be really helpful in this case at dealing with this manual research. Let's open the first article, [foreign language]. So this record shows title in Korean Romanized title, publication information and publisher and then citation which is this article is from [foreign language] published 1949, volume 10, page from 96-99. From this point, you can request article with this citation information. Browse Authors. Since we don't know that many North Korean authors name, browse authors can be very useful which has over 21,800 names in Korean and Romanized Korean form. So we retrieved eight articles on the name of Kim Il. Kim Il was the one who joined arms resistance against the Japan with Kim Il-sung. Also, you can use a Boolean operator. Let's see few examples. So we are looking for article with economics as the subject and published in 1958. We retrieved 757 articles. And this time, we like to have article only related to South Korea. So we enter Economics AND, upper case AND, and 1958, upper case AND [foreign language]. We got 12 articles. As you can see, you can take advantage of article advanced search feature like other databases. This is very exciting feature for the North Korean serials which was not expected to do in the past. Of course, if you have a time, you can browse all articles index. Currently, we have 44,249 articles because alternative title even though we made those 34,000 articles, we have more titles. Search by publication date. You can search article from particular year or years by entering the years, limit the search to publication date. To search for article in the range of years, use a square bracket and upper case TO you can also add the NOT in upper case to skip the year. So for example, I tried to search the article published from 1950 to 1953 but not 1952. So I use a square bracket, 1950, uppercase TO and then add uppercase NOT to skip the 1952. Here are the 244 results from this search. And again, you can sort by title, name and date. Also, you can search [foreign language] poster painting, anything you can think of on the everything option. ^M00:24:05 ^M00:24:10 So the study of North Korea is gaining more popular lately among scholars and graduate students, this unique and abundant resources at the Library will play a significant role in supporting scholarship in this field. North Korean's serial collection is one of our popular collections. So digitization of these collections is the Library's top priority in the future. If you have any questions or concern, let me know or you can send it to me through the Ask a Librarian. And then this conclude my presentation but I displayed some of the books and serials from North Korea. Please take a look if you have time. Thank you. ^M00:25:02 [ Applause ] ^M00:25:07 ^M00:25:32 >> Eric Van Slander: Thank you very much for coming here and thank you for inviting me. My talk is going to be a little different than hers. I'm not going to talk so much about the records, but more about the procedures to gain access to the records. As was mentioned in the introduction, my name is Eric Van Slander. I work at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. Has anyone been to the National Archives? OK. Good, two people, three people, good. Has anyone been to the National Archives in DC? Oh OK, great. So yes. The records I'm going to talk about today are held in College Park, Maryland. And what I'm going to do today is first, I'm going to give a brief introduction on how to conduct research with the National Archives in College Park. Second, I'm going to talk a little bit about the captured Korean records particularly how we got them, what they contained, and how they're arranged, again, just very briefly. And the third thing is a procedural like about how to actually request the records that interest you. ^M00:26:41 ^M00:26:46 Now, first of all, who can access records at the National Archives? The short answer, anyone. You don't need to be an American citizen. You don't need to present credentials. You don't need letters of recommendations. The only thing you would need to do would be to show up in person either at our Archives I facility or our Archives II facility. And you would do this on a weekday starting from 8:30 on. And in order to register, you would simply have to produce a photo ID, meaning like a driver's license, your work ID, school ID, that kind of thing. You would then complete a short form where you provide your personal information, your address, telephone and a brief description of your research topic. The third thing you would do once you would get there would be to view a computer-based research orientation. And basically, it's just telling you how to properly use archival records, how to safeguard these records, the basic rules, procedures and practices. Before I go any further, does anyone know the basic difference between an archives and a library? OK. The basic difference is libraries tend to keep secondary source published materials, archives, for the most part, tend to have primary documents. And in the case of the National Archives, these are primary documents produced by US government, executive branch agencies or in the case of the captured Korean records, records that were captured by people employed by the commander-in-chief, meaning, the US Army in North Korea. And after you've done the research registration process, the last thing you do is sit for your photographs. So dress up nicely how we want to be and that card is going to be good for year. There are no fees charged either for registering as a researcher and there are no fees for the support that people like myself was obliged to. There are staff on hand when you get there but it's not a bad idea to let us know in advance before you come. At the end of my presentation, I'll have my contact information up. But also at the end, feel free to stop and ask me for a card, I would be more than happy to help you. As I said, our research hour-- room hours are Monday to Friday, 8:45 to 5:45. In the past, we had Saturday hours, but due to budget issues, we have eliminated those and we're open Monday to Friday. If you're in DC, probably the easiest way to get to our facility in College Park which is right next to the University of Maryland is to take a free shuttle service. And we have a free shuttle that runs between our Archives I facility and Archives II. For those of you who preferred to drive, we have free parking, but come early because parking is a little limited. Unlike some places, we have set times for requesting records at the National Archives College Park. There are three requests times in the morning. And one request-- and three requests times in the afternoon. ^M00:30:02 So keep this in mind as you're planning a day of research at National Archives. This change will probably tell you. So get there as early as you can. Get registered. And after you submit your request for records, it takes usually about an hour for you to get your records. So it can take, you know, the better part of the half of the day to really get rolling. And at each request time, you can request up to 16 boxes of records. And I'll explain that one of these boxes looks like later. And if you want more information about going research at the National Archives, there is a link to our website. And it talks about what you can bring with you, what you can't bring with you and these types of things. OK. As I said, my main purpose in being here is to tell you about the Record Group 242, National Archives Collection of Foreign Seized Records from the Korean War. As you all know, during the Korean War, US forces moved rather quickly up through the Korean Peninsula up to the, up to the Yalu River. During that time, tens of thousands of pages of documents were collected at various cities all along the way. I think the bulk of what we have was captured in the Capitol in Pyongyang, but there are also things captured in Seoul and elsewhere along the way. The documents in this large collection span basically the period 1921 to 1952 and it cover numerous subjects. But most of these subjects are pertaining to the Soviet Union and North Korea. In a-- these records consists of a variety of types of things. Everything from official correspondence to office files, personnel files, printed materials, things like books, periodicals, magazines, newspapers, both in various types, photographs, propaganda leaflets, things like that. OK. The great majority of the records that were captured are in either Russian, or in Korea. But there are also some materials in other languages such as Bulgarian, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian. Pretty much any type of printed materials that would have been on the Korean Peninsula at that time could have gotten scooped up by UN forces as they had in North basically. After these records were captured, the US Army quickly spearheaded them off the Korean Peninsula to Tokyo which is where the Far East command Military Intelligence division was. So those records were kept. This again, these tens of thousands of pages of records were kept in Tokyo for basically spot intelligence, what was going to be useful for the actual fighting that was going on at that time in Korea. And after that, they were shipped by ship from Yokohama to Alexandria, Virginia. And once they arrived in Alexandria, Virginia, they were held for a bit longer for more detailed analysis by the Army and other sort of CIA type agencies for any intelligence that might have been in there. And then after the intelligence agency is finish with these records, in 1958 they were transferred to the National Archives. Now originally these records were held at a facility in Suitland, Maryland because the building in Archives II where I work had not been constructed in 1958. In the 1990s when my building was built, those records were transferred out to us. The records are hard to use. Reason for that being as James will attest is that they are not arranged by subject. They are instead arranged according to the way they were shipped, OK, which makes it quite challenging. Now the army which makes things difficult always attempted to impose intellectual control over the documents because you these tens of thousands of pages documented, what's in them. A lot of people can't even read the language. But, you know, in an attempt to get control of it, they basically set up these inventories where the shipment number or shipment advice would have been indicated. The original box number which would have been like a big sort of footlocker type box and then the documents were simply numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that kind of thing, OK. And that's how the documents are arranged. These inventories that the army created were later microfilmed and actually came to us with the records. OK. So these badly arranged records, how do you request them? You don't just want to randomly start with box one and start looking, not a good use of your time. You're all very busy people. I know that. The-- what you do, step one is you come to College Park and you go to the fourth floor which is the microfilm research room. And that is where you will gain access to the microfilm copies of the shipping list that the army had composed. The microfilm publications at the National Archives all have numbers assigned to them. In this case, it's microfilm publication M1950 and has a really sexy title, "Shipping Advice Lists for Record Seized by US Military Forces During the Korean War, 1950, 54", so. But that's the firsts step to getting access to the records. OK. What I've done there in-- nice and green for you to look at, this is a screen shot from one of the microfilm lists. And what I've done, I've circled in red the important information which allows you to request the document that you would like to see. As you can see, the shipping advice number in this case is 2005. That is the shipment number. And then box one of the shipment in box in item one within there. And you can see that it has information in English about what the documents being described are. And just for the-- keeping it simple, I circled the first one. And this is a printed book, a 486 page document in Korean as you can see at the top that was captured in Pyongyang. Now, if you actually were interested in that book, then the next step would be-- OK, there are two ways to do it. And unfortunately, the National Archives Catalog is nowhere nearly as nice and well-organized, this Library of Congress, full disclosure. But hopefully, the link will work. What I've done is found the catalog entry for the records being described in the microfilm I just showed you. As you can, yes, Korean language publication, records captured at Pyongyang, record group 242. And then this is a long list of sort of the records in this collection of records. OK. Now, this information basically comes from the microfilm which I just showed you a shut of earlier. Now, since you know the number, you know, the shipping advice gets us into this particular entry and we know that it's box one, item one. So if you scroll way down to the bottom of the page, you see list strings of boxes. OK. See right here, the SA number is the first thing. And box one, item one is going to be in container or box number 36. So this is how we would then take it to the next step and order the records. I will show you how to do that shortly. And full disclosure, please contact this before you try to do this on your own. This is not an easy thing to do. OK. All right. So I'll try to make it easy though. So now that you know the record group number, the entry number and not the original box that were shipped from Korea number but the box that NARA keeps the records in box 36, we can take it t the next step. And also in addition to the National Archives catalog, there are actually for use of researchers to Korean language secondary source reference books done by Korean scholars that also help you to gain access to the records. It's not for everything, but they've selectively gone through and sort of thematically in certain subjects. So that's also a good thing to use. I think James when you were there, did you have a chance to use-- >> James F. Person: Yeah. >> Eric Van Slander: And that's, that's a good-- And again, that's a National Archives product, that's a product done by Korean scholars. ^M00:39:22 ^M00:39:29 I think I lost my-- I'm back. OK. OK. So now that we know the original information, the current information in terms of the box entry, the next step is to fill out a reference service slip or a pull slip as it's called. And that is something that would have information we saw on the previous page. And this is something unfortunately, unlike some places that must be done in person at the National Archives. ^M00:40:04 This is not something you can do prior to going, you need to do it in person. And then once you fill out this slip with our expert guidance, then you submit that slip to one of the staff members, not at the microfilm section but downstair on the second floor where you would actually request your records. Now this is what a reference service or pull slip would look like. The stuff I circled in red is the information we've gleamed from the catalogue page a couple of pages earlier. So again, this is something your first time there, don't worry we're not going to let you on your own. We will help you to do this and request the records that you would see. OK. And at the end of this long laborious process, hopefully, yes, you will have a box, OK. At the National Archives, you are-- even if you're only after one document or one file or one book, you are requesting the entire box. And this is an actual box, I went into the stock areas the other day and took a picture and this tells you that, yes, this box contains record of 242, the entry and the series of the shipping advice numbers. So, one of these boxes contains approximately a thousand pages. Again, you don't have to look at everything, you're more than welcome to browse but, you know, it is a pretty time consuming thing. And as I said previously, it takes about an hour for your one or 16 boxes, however, many you choose to order. OK. Now, you have your boxes, you found your documents, what next? The next thing you can do, we have self service photocopiers which are also scanners. You can either make photocopies of the records, 25 cents a page. Your research required functions as a debit card. You can deposit money in that way. If you bring your own USB drive, you can plug it into our machine but we'll still charge you 25 cents to scan. I don't make these rules but the most popular option these days are for people to bring either their smartphone or digital camera and you can actually take pictures of the records. If you are taking a lot of pictures, we can provide you with the camera stands so you can click, click, click, click away. That's something-- It's free as long as it's non-flash. You can bring a flatbed scanner, some people like that to get really nice flat images. As long as it's sort of pre-approved, you can bring the flatbed scanner. But the link in how to conduct research, that will tell you what you can and what you can't bring. If you're unsure, let us know. We'll say yes or no. But basically, any flatbed scanner that does not have a feeder on it is accepted. If you're running out of time and you want us to make copies for you, we'll do it. Eighty cents a page, not cheap. Very few people do this often. And this is our break even number, by the way, we don't make a profit. The next thing that people actually do a little bit more and if you go on to our website, there are lists of researchers for hire and they will do research. They're not in our employees. These are private people who just list their information on here and you can reach out to them. Tell them what you're trying to do and then negotiate a price, price of thing. So that's the other option that you can take. OK. That's basically what I-- yes and now it's time for question. Yes? ^M00:43:52 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:43:57 Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. Actually I mentioned-- I'm about to mention that. OK. On day one, you get there, you start using your records. 5:45 is fast approaching, they're flickering the lights. OK. Yes, you can save records until the next day. Actually you can save-- you don't even have to comeback the next day. You can save them for three days or even five if you plead your case and say, I really need five days, type of a thing. Yeah. So, you can definitely-- You don't have to rush and finish on that day. OK. Yes? ^M00:44:32 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:44:37 Oh, yes. Unless you have problems with the North Koreans and their copyright laws, I don't know. No, I mean-- only half jokingly. Most of what we have at the National Archives has no copyright researches. If there is a question, if it was a secondary source that was in something was captured, it's basically up to you to work that out. But you don't need permission from us. The only thing we ask if you're going to publish an image of the document or something else, photograph, whatever, give a good citation because-- you know, which record group it comes from, which entry, which box because we have no ability to go in and search at the document or records. So that's like on a daily basis, we get emails with like a scan of a document saying I want a copy of the rest of this. Where is it? And we really, really, have a hard time tracking that. So yeah, the short answer is there are no restrictions but please cite the document in terms of-- and on our website, there's also sort of a format on how to properly sort our documents and that kind of thing. So, OK. I know we have a Q&A period at the end, so if you have other questions, please feel free. Thank you. ^M00:45:53 [ Applause ] ^M00:45:57 ^M00:46:06 >> James F. Person: All right. Well good afternoon everyone. I'm James Person, NCNK member and faculty at Johns Hopkins SAIS here in Washington where I teach the Korean Studies classes. I am, today, going to talk about materials from other countries about North Korea. You've heard about materials of the North Koreans produce, periodicals and primary source documents but there-- while this provide great front door access to North Korea to learning about-- and Sonya gave some examples of things to learn about North Korean society, about North Korean culture, history, politics. We also have great backdoor access to North Korea through materials that were produces by embassies in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital throughout the Cold War era. For about a decade, I oversaw-- a little over a decade, I oversaw a project at Woodrow Wilson Center that went into-- systematically went into the archives of North Korea's former communist allies. So some of the countries that we were in were-- we were in the Russian archives, Chinese, the East German archives, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, Czech archives gathering materials that, again, are produced in-- largely in North Korea and then dispatched back to Foreign Ministries. You have among these materials, records of conversations between North Korean officials and they're interlocutors in North Korea including for example, the ambassadors and also you have working level diplomats meeting with North Korean officials. So you have all, you know, many different levels of meetings. You have very high level meetings between say Kim Il-sung and the Soviet Ambassador. And then you have-- I never see councilor meeting with somebody talking about the quality of concrete being used to form the foundation of the newly built annex to the Soviet Embassy, something along those lines. So you have many levels of talks. And records are kept for all of these meetings. You also have these diplomatic cables that are being produced in the embassies by diplomats who are there to really observe what's going on in the country and then to report about this and send these detailed cables back to their embassies describing development in the country, developments in their, yeah, in North Korea's domestic situation and as well as North Korea's relations with their allies. These are just the few-- I-- some documents I have sitting on the house last night that I snapped pictures of you have for example a-- these are soviet records from 1954. You have for example a record of conversation with the Ambassador of North Korea or the North Korean Ambassador to the Soviet Union, a guy called [inaudible]. ^M00:50:10 And then you have a soviet report on classes and class warfare in the DPRK. These are-- as you can-- well, this conversation here with the Soviet or the North Korean Ambassador to Moscow should add that we also have records of conversations that took place in other countries, so-- that involved North Korean officials. So it's not just the conversations that occurred in North Korea but for example when a meeting occurred with the North Korean Ambassador in Moscow, you would have a record of that. If a delegation from North Korea, we travel to other countries, then you'd also have the full records of those meetings included in the files from the-- the files on North Korea from these archives. Some of the things we can learn about North Korea from these materials are-- we can learn a lot about North Korea's foreign relations, a lot about their domestic politics, about economic policies, military developments and a lot about North Korean society. There were some limitations as many of you I'm sure are aware. The North Koreans were not always open even to their allies. And there were times when the North Koreans were in conflict with their allies. So, for example, on the early 1960s, the relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang soured, and that meant also that the relationship between Pyongyang and most other central and eastern European allies that were closely allied with the Soviets also were not good. So in times like this, you know, the quality of reporting could sometimes suffer but these diplomats that were based in North Korea were actually quite skilled at gathering information and would often compared notes. And one former East German Ambassador to North Korea described it as really picking up pebbles here and there and then assembling a mosaic by, you know, getting together with, you know, your friends and, you know, comparing notes. And you often find among the records converse-- records of conversations between other diplomats that are stationed in North Korea. So for example, you may have a large group. You have regular meetings that occurred between East German, Russian, Czech, diplomats where they would really share notes on what they were experiencing in the country and tried to develop a better sense of developments in the country. And this is especially helpful when the materials that the North Koreans themselves produced don't really provide or send a lot of light on developments and political conflict for example, say 1956 or 1967, these are periods of them working on. You don't have a lot of information about other than these reports that denounce the activities of these individuals who are eventually purged. Well we get a better sense by looking at the conversations that these diplomats are having and then their-- the cables that they're producing, what was actually going on and what issue is-- were at stake. Was it simply as the standard narrative, a factional struggle or were there principled policy positions at stake. These are things that we can begin to understand by looking at some of these materials. So it's a lot of use to them for the historian. They-- Really these materials force us to step back and ask some basic questions, basically epistemological questions about how knowledge about North Korea was-- has been produced and how we know what we think we know. And I'm using these to really challenge a lot of things we thought we knew about North Korean history. Things-- I mean is-- I mentioned factions. I mean this notion that you had after the Korean war, this intense factional rivalry, we had-- you had Soviet faction, and Chinese faction the Kim Il-sung's group. And Kim Il-sung skillfully played these factions off one another until his power was unassailable. This is the standard narrative. What we see if you really interrogate these materials though is that it wasn't so simple. You had, in fact, principled policy positions at stake. And this, these positions seem to be the issue of contention and not so much the revolutionary background of the individuals. It was much more complex. You have internationalism versus nationalism. You have issues of the culture personality versus collective leadership. You have the consumer economy versus the industrial economy. And these, again, are the issues that are really driving political developments after the Korean War not just this notion of, you know, endemic factionalism in the Korean workers party that we all know today. So, a lot have used these materials to really getting a better understanding of North Korean history and rethinking what we believe we know about North Korean history. But they-- These materials also help us understand North Korea today. But before I get into that, let me just briefly-- can I go into where you can get access to a lot of these materials? Well, as I said, for a decade, I ran the project at the Wilson Center that gathered these materials. One thing I'm quite proud of is something I develop called the Modern Korean History Portal, which provides multiple points of access to the documents. And you just go and then Google and type in Modern Korean History Portal. And you have, you know, your timeline which just features different developments in Korean history. And you can actually get direct access to some of the relevant documents. So, for example, you know, here's, you know, something from September 6, 1945, you have a Soviet report on communism in Korea from that period that is directly relevant connected to the issue discussed there. You also have featured resources including essays. It's not Wikipedia. We're not just letting anyone write this, but we've-- you know, when-- actually commissioned essays from professional scholars of Korean history. You also had biographies of key figures in North Korean history. And then you have curated collections of documents. And just, you know, just click on conversations with Kim Il-sung, you have hundreds and hundreds of conversations. These records or memorandum conversations that I was talking about with Kim Il-sung going from 1949 all the way through, you see here, 1988. It's really spanning this guy's lifetime in leadership. So a great resource. I encourage you all to access it again to work with these materials really challenge your thinking about North Korean history. But, there's also have use to these materials and really understanding North Korea today. And this requires, you know, sort of a longer term, you know, work with these documents across, you know, larger or a broader period of time. These materials they also really achieve-- they really challenge received wisdom on North Korea today. They-- And if you do apply a broader historical sensibility then you can really begin to identify, you know, patterns and really more accurately interpret contemporary developments. Let me just look at two areas where I try to do this. So, one thing that's emerged from these documents, again, if you-- when you really interrogate the materials is that we can challenge this idea that China and North Korean are as close as lips and teeth as the expression goes. This expression is suggesting, of course, the level of intimacy among two states. And that Beijing today wields enormous influence over Pyongyang. ^M01:00:02 What you can see from the materials and then I encourage you to look through these conversations with Kim Il-sung in particular, you can see that, well, this may not be the case that in fact there is a profound sense of mistrust in the relationship, really going both ways. But for the North Koreans, one can see from the conversations not just with Kim Il-sung but with many other I mentioned that you have conversations at various levels. At all levels, you see people, North Korean officials describing this profound sense of mistrust toward Beijing, this sense that China is, at times, overly interventionist and not respectful of Korean sovereignty. And what's fascinating is to look at conversations with Kim Il-sung and to see how over the years the list of grievances grows. So, in 1955, you see him complaining about the actions of, for example, [inaudible] during the Korean War that person who was in charge with the Chinese people's volunteers. His arrogance and dealing with Kim Il-sung and he also blames [inaudible] for decisions-- battlefield decisions that Kim felt ultimately caused him victory. A couple years later, you see him adding on to that list describing events in 1956 where the Chinese and the soviets directly meddled in, you know, in a party conflict. You see then this list growing and growing and growing over the years. So you have the cultural revolutions. You have eventually even the criticism of Kim Jong-Il's succession. But it mixed clear that there is a profound sense of mistrust. And this really forces us to question this understanding that we have today that, you know, basically the road to Pyongyang starts in Beijing and that we really need-- And then China, you know, again wields enormous political influence over North Korea. Clearly, yes, they wield enormous material leverage but what we can learn from-- you know, by through the application of a broader historical sensibility using these documents, we can understand that China does not have the ability to act will exercise political influence because of this really tortured history. Another area where-- again, we all-- you know, again the received wisdom is that the North Koreans skillfully played the Soviets and the Chinese off one another throughout the Cold War that there were these-- you know, Kim Il-sung was this master manipulator. And he was able to extract maximum concessions from the soviets and the Chinese. This I actually think is an extension of this understanding that we have about factional rivalry within the Korean workers party where Kim skillfully played the rival factions off one another until his power was unassailable. And this, I would say, goes back to Japanese colonial era propaganda of this essentialist narrative of endemic factionalism. But Kim Il-sung certainly uses this and labels his rivals as factions. But we have this understanding that Kim was able to play others off one another and, again, extract maximum concessions. But when you really look at when you break down the-- you know, if you look-- really examine his-- the relationship between the soviets and the North Koreans and the Chinese and the north Koreans over the years, you see that North Korea never really has sufficient leverage over either Moscow or Beijing to really extract these concessions that we all think that they got. And in fact what they did receive was often stuff that the soviets themselves were no longer even using or things that the-- or the Chinese couldn't-- weren't actually producing things that were helpful to the North Koreans or at least at the level that the North Koreans had hoped. Moreover when relations were poor with the soviets, for example, from '62 to '64, it's a very short period of time, they were so poor that the North Koreans had really no choice but to move closer to the Chinese, otherwise, they would have been completely isolated. Likewise when relations report with the Chinese, this is during the culture evolution, they were so poor. I mean to the point where you had armed clashes on the border. You know, Chinese troops marching into North Korean territory. Then, you know, North Korea really didn't have any choice but to warm up to the Soviets. Again, they would have been completely isolated had they not. The North Koreans were more reactive than they were, you know, the master manipulators, you know, sort of juggling all these balls at one time. And indeed by the '70s, by-- as the more extreme faces of the Cultural Revolution subsided, the North Koreans took steps to really reduce to the extent possible, the influence of both Beijing and Moscow on a trajectory of political economic and cultural developments. This is something they started early but really tried to make the country impervious to these influences and maintains a policy of equidistance, you know, keeping both Moscow and Beijing at arms length. So we really need to rethink this notion and then by extension really try to, you know, look at the ability of north Korea today to do what many believed and playing Beijing and Washington off one another. Is it rather trying-- you know, by this frequent, with this frequent trips to Beijing as he-- or to try new other not just the Beijing but as Kim Jong-un, again, trying to play the US and Washington off one another or is he-- or the Chinese and the US off one another or is he trying to make sure he has all of his flanks covered. So much to be learned from these materials to better understand North Korean history and, again, through the application of a historical sensibility to, you know, better understand developments, contemporary developments to better frame contemporary developments. Happy to take questions or during the Q&A to talk more about the documents and to point you in certain directions if you-- you know, on your research with some of these documents. Thank you. ^M01:07:27 [ Applause ] ^M01:07:32 ^M01:07:39 >> Daniel Wertz: I like to thank our three speakers for that-- their excellent presentations. I think that North Korea's often misrepresented in the media as something of a black box where there's no information that gets out. I think these people on this room know that's clearly not the case. But getting access to that information on North Korea can sometimes be a black box for scholars who are starting out trying to navigate the resources that are available. So I think it's really helpful that we've got our three speakers today giving some very practical advice to people trying to start doing research on North Korea using these different collections. And with that, I'd like to open it up to question and answers from the audience. And do we have microphone for the audience? No? I'll just reiterate the questions with that. OK. >> James F. Person: Yeah. They won't be captured. >> Daniel Wertz: Yeah. They won't be captured on the recording. So, I'll just summarize the questions. Yeah? ^M01:08:46 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:08:59 So, for people with limited language skills, how difficult is it to use these different resources? >> Eric Van Slander: You go. >> James F. Person: Well-- So, for the materials from former communist bloc archives, a portion of those have been translated into English. And that's what you see available on this Modern Korean History Portal. But for every one document, there are dozens, dozens more that are untranslated. And it is-- that's one of the problems is that getting access to this without the languages, you know, is going to be hindrance especially with the Korean language materials. I mean the index, the serial index, you would need to have Korean to know what it is because there's no translation of the articles titles, for example. ^M01:10:08 >> Sonya Lee: Actually, I can show you one data of this [inaudible]. This is in the same thing with the article index but-- ^M01:10:19 ^M01:10:24 -- if you go Asian Reading Room homepage pretty much what you-- what I told you CDR database North Korean CDR Database you see here. But then the one we have--sorry, I mean it's really my eyeglasses is not good. So there's Korean bibliography you see in there. ^M01:10:50 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:10:55 Yes, yes. So, this is the one covered until 1995, English material on Korea. So, actually, I played out all these, topical term index, which is from the table of content. So rather than dealing with the subject, you can pull it related books. Find the books easily. So this is arranged. So this is English material. We-- if we go like Kim Il-sung, for example-- So this should be between here, right? So this is the one you can find written by him or about him. And then if you go any of their article-- the record and you can go from on and on here. You know, you can go by subject or by author or if you click the term, extra term and you can go further from there. So, this is the one way you can search the English material if you need it from Korea. This is also primary record too but in Korean. I mean the-- about North Korea. ^M01:12:06 ^M01:12:12 >> Eric Van Slander: As, I showed in one of my slides at least the inventory to the record is in English. Although it's very laborious to go through it, you can at least identify things that are potentially relevant and then maybe get some help, you know, to actually translate what you found, another thing which is actually separate from the captured Korean records. We do have very extensive military intelligence reporting and these are compiled reports done by US military intelligence people during the Korean War period and shortly thereafter using Korean language sources and sort of summarizing them in English for dissemination amongst Americans who don't read Korean. So that's another possibility. So, for example, within the Far East command records, you will have these types of things within the records of the Eighth Army, which was the army that still in Korea. You'll find that kind of thing. In some cases where North Koreans or Chinese soldiers were captured, the interrogations will sometimes be summarized. So these are ways where you can-- even if your Korean is not perfect, you know, you could potentially still do research at the National Archives. But the time is always the challenge because as I said before, it's the-- it's really hard to go in and find the specific documents. But, there are ways to sort of get around, you know, your lack of language skills. >> James F. Person: And to be sure, if you are doing more of it, you know, if you're looking more at a political, you know, diplomatic developments, US intelligence reports are pretty good. Not perhaps as good as some of the, you know, the Eastern Bloc materials and they're present in North Korea and reporting on what they're observing, but we had our way of finding out. And you should also note, the British records are always and that they're very good resource. The British National Archives, which I have to say, I'm sorry, a little easier to navigate. >> Eric Van Slander: It means job security. >> Daniel Wertz: And to follow up on that question for some of the older North Korean records, those, especially from the 1940s and '50s, how much hanja are Koreanized Chinese characters you need to know to be able to read some of these records compared to more contemporary Korean documents? >> Sonya Lee: Library Congress collection not the many Chinese characters. >> James F. Person: The North Koreans actually eliminated hanja pretty early-- the you know the Chinese characters pretty early on, you know trying to eliminate you know, you know, again, cultural influences from China. I mean certainly by-- I mean while you look at South Korean records and you see Park Chung-hee using-- I mean, you know, you look at a document and it could be almost 50% in hanja, North Korean records by-- I mean, really by the early '50s are almost-- it's completely gone. >> Eric Van Slander: With the caption records, of course, depending on the vintage of the records. So the earlier stuff would have more hanja than the later stuff. >> Daniel Wertz: Ester? ^M01:16:04 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:16:21 >> Eric Van Slander: Sure. >> Daniel Wertz: Yeah, that's just for the recording, to understand the current condition of the documents, the National Archives and digitization. >> Eric Van Slander: Well, the physical condition of some of the documents is quite good-- are quite good. Some on them because of-- for example, if it was very, very poor quality newsprint or things like that, probably not as good, to my knowledge there is no project to digitize these records at the time. I do know that there are-- on a daily basis, Korean researchers they're digitizing records. They're not sort of teamed up with the National Archives to share those images with us, but they are going somewhere. >> Sonya Lee: They [inaudible] Korea. >> Eric Van Slander: Exactly. I know for example the National Library of Korea has people who come and digitize things. The National Institute of Korean History has people who've digitized things. So there are sort of non-National Archives efforts out there to digitize things, particularly since they are so difficult to navigate. But at this point, yeah, we don't have-- I mean in actuality, we have very, very few of our records digitized. And the main reason for that being is just the resources required to do that, because things that are not digitized, you know, the process of digitizing them is just so labor intensive. And once the records are digitized then, of course, they're only as good as the metadata attached to them. So how searchable would they be and if they're in foreign languages, you know, typical OCR technology probably doesn't work on a hand written Korean letter. These types of things. There are certain challenges, I think, to that. But yeah, I wish, you know, tomorrow that we would be able to do that. But I know there has been interest in digitizing at least portions of them, but at this point, yeah, we're not there yet. Yeah. >> James F. Person: If I can just add, Eric mentioned that National Institute of Korean History [inaudible], they actually have published dozens of volumes of curated collections from the-- >> Eric Van Slander: And one of the Korean language volumes not-- nor are produced was produced by them, so yeah. >> Daniel Wertz: Paulie [assumed spelling]? ^M01:18:56 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:19:35 So what's the role for policymakers? >> Sonya Lee: You answer. >> James F. Person: No, I don't have an answer. I've been-- This is something I've been struggling with for years now, for over a decade, you know, trying to make these materials-- trying to get these materials into the hands of the people who, you know, need a better understand, for example, the relationship between China and North Korea, you know, so what I would, and not every historian is going to be willing to do this, but, you know, I would actually take excepts from three-- for example on sign of DPRK relations. ^M01:20:17 There are three documents that I would refer to, you know. One is 73 conversation between Kim Il-sung and [inaudible]. In 1977, East German cable on the relationship and 1986 between-- conversation between Kim Il-sung and a Mongolian official. The conversation with [inaudible] is 13 pages. I know that people in the policy community would not waste their time reading 13 pages even though I think it's-- they would learn much from it. So, you know, just kind of extract the most important parts of it. And, you know, you cannot put them in a brief report and try to get that in their hands. I've had the opportunity to brief people just, you know, across the street here, members of-- it's actually senators and member of the house. And I don't know that they actually look at them, they'll listen to me as I'm describing the contents, but, you know, I don't know if they take the time to read the two or three page summary and, you know, extracts or excerpts rather. But, you know, there's so much that you could do. You know, you can't compile all of these rich, you know, materials and do a two-paragraph summary. I mean you can, but, you know, as a historian, of course, I tend toward, you know, I want to, you know, give the full context, you know. So there are challenges and-- but, you know, certainly the material is there. There are efforts to, you know, curate collections to make it more accessible to-- you know, and then to compile these forts, but one thing I find with North Korea is that people are just-- you know, you have your fixed ideas and, you know, no matter how many documents I waive in front of your face, you're not going to change your mind. That's something that's frustrating us, you know, as a historian who's been setting the country for, you know, a long time now, and who really understand that much of what we think we know is-- has been, you know, needs to be reconsidered. But, with North Korea, because there is this perception, you know, again, the black box or there's, you know, this notion that North Korea is unknown and unknowable, people just don't want to challenge these-- you know, what they bring to the table already, these notions that they already have, so frustrating but-- >> Sonya Lee: If I say one-- may-- one-- things that Library Congress as a CRS which is Congressional Researcher Service, so the Congress, they don't deal with us directly, they are the one actually send their assistant and their CRS is the one collect, you know, information and report to the Congress. So that's the one-- they are the one we are dealing with. So I cannot say [inaudible] but they are the one. Because even though I emphasize 1940 to '60 or the '70 collection because they are the one, because it's hard to find this, so we are getting a lot of wager, so I focus on that but still we're still getting a lot of updated, you know, current publication. So they are the one who come and search, you know, with the skills and look at the checking downloads Korean, you know, newspapers and articles and try to dig out, you know, fact or information. >> Eric Van Slander: Well, on your topic, actually in terms of the National Archives, I think for most policymakers, our stuff is a little old. I mean frankly, well, they captured Korean records, for example, it's pretty much the end of the Korean War is-- But I mean in actuality, it takes at least about 30 years for records to start accessioning from the government agencies to us. And then after the records accession or transferred to us, it takes even longer for the records to be declassified. So in reality what you would be able to access, you know, as a researcher, it could easily be something that's 50 years old. So unless the policymaker is really keen on history, which they probably should be, but they're not obviously, you know, and I think our collections are probably not super useful. Another part of the National Archives, the Presidential Library System might be a little more useful in that way. So, you know-- and, for example, the papers of the National Security Council, those kind of things, but, of course, classification always becomes an issue with intelligence work product. So keep that in mind if you're coming to the National Archives wanting things from the 1980s, probably not the best place to be. Yeah. >> James F. Person: Although the country files at the Reagan Library from 1980-- through 1984 were just released on Korea. >> Eric Van Slander: On the issue of digitization, actually, the presidential libraries are much, much better about digitizing things than the main part of the National Archive, so yeah, their websites are actually quite good. >> James F. Person: Well, they're only-- it's only-- you can only see them in person. But Simi Valley is a lovely place. I encourage you to go. It's-- But these were just like four weeks ago, I think, [inaudible]. >> Daniel Wertz: Jonathan? ^M01:26:17 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:26:35 >> James F. Person: Sure. So after the Korean War, you had this debate within-- well, you had a discussion. You had-- you know, it was a very diverse party at that time, you did have people with different revolutionary backgrounds, but-- and they-- you know, and you had some that were more internationals than more in-tuned with what was happening in the socialist camp. And after the death of Joseph Stalin, you had a reorientation of the Soviet economy toward consumer goods, you know, sort of the-- shifting from the industrial economy to more, you know, geared toward improving the living standards for the Soviet citizen. This was then promoted throughout the socialist camp including to North Korea. And in fact, these new Soviet policies were reflected in Soviet aid to North Korea. We're only-- all but 3% of the total amount of aid was given as a blank check, everything else was allocated for projects that essentially-- that would have, in some way, improve the living standards of the North Korean people. Kim Il-sung, however, was really trying to eliminate colonial error distortions to the national economy. It was determined to make an economy that was more internally interdependent and externally independent wanting to eliminate the potential for future dependency relationships. After the Korean War, he saw that the-- they were utterly dependent on the Soviets especially for military and so, he-- and as the basis for developing an economy or developing military, you needed to have an industrial economy. And so, Kim was focused on general industrialization but focusing on heavy industry. Wanted to, again, to eliminate these colonial-era distortions where you had highly developed extractive and primary processing industries, but no ability to produce spare parts and finished goods. So you had then this-- you had discussion in the party over which path to take. Do you follow the Soviet model and improve living conditions? And the more internationalist member of the Korean workers party were supportive of this, but Kim Il-sung was very much focused on eliminating future dependency relations, including with allies, the Soviet Union and China. And you have then this discussion in the party turning into a debate when you have a famine in late '54, early '55. And there's a lot of criticism of Kim's policies which are focused so much on-- despite the fact that Soviet aid is not supporting his plans. ^M01:30:06 He is mobilizing indigenous human immaterial resources to try to push through his goals. But then you have this famine that comes with the process of collectivizing agriculture. And this discussion turns more into criticism and there are unfavorable comparisons being made between Kim's policies and the policies being implemented in the Soviet Union to improve living conditions. And at that point, Kim Il-sung begins to see this as a threat. It's more-- He sees as a threat. It was national security imperatives and as a challenge to him personally. He didn't see this debate as something that would necessarily strengthen policy but he saw it as a direct challenge. And so, this is when he begins this process of othering. In focusing on the revolutionary backgrounds of the people who were more cosmopolitan who were more internationalist and were advancing or promoting the adaption of Soviet economic policies. And at the same time, he is promoting his own-- highlighting his own revolutionary background as the core of the Korean revolutionary tradition. So he's marginalizing those who are criticizing his policies and engineering their downfall. But what-- I mean, we can see a lot about this from a lot of the Soviet reports after '55 in particular, but you have to also compare with-- you have to look also to fill it out a little bit because it's not-- the level of reporting immediately after the Korean War is not so great because the embassies were just rebuilding. They were just moving back to Pyongyang. And so, for example, the Soviet Embassy wasn't even rebuilt yet, they were operating out of temporary facilities. They weren't-- the embassy was not fully staffed, there were other embassies. So you have to look at the available reports and then come here to the Library of Congress and read North Korea's own publication, the periodicals. For example, I was just, before you all arrived, I was over there looking at [inaudible], which is the party's-- it's the-- [Inaudible]. Hmm? [Inaudible]. No, I'm describing what it is. It's a journal that's produced by the Central Committee. So it's the party's official journal. And you can see actually-- in [inaudible], you can actually see the saddle of these debates occurring in-- among top officials. But they're very subtle. I mean it's not-- you're not going to see overt criticism of Kim and of his policies in these journals. They're just sort of, well, you know, you have-- on the one side, you have, you know, the industrial economy is the basis of an independent national economy. And after you have an industrial North Korea, then you can have improved living conditions and we will have an independent military as well. And then on the other side you see sort of these discussions that we're promoting an improvement of a living conditions, you know, the people have suffered over throughout the colonial era and then from-- after the devastation of the [inaudible] the American Imperialist aggressors. You know it's time to really focus on improving living conditions for the people. And so you see these subtle discussions in these journals. And then again when you compare that then with what you have from the Soviet records and East German record, then, you know, forward picture emerges. If you people have really tried to look at this period though or if you contextualized some of the developments that occurred during this period including Kim Il-sung's use of the expression Juche, this is something-- you'll have to wait my book, yeah. So, sorry, long answer. >> Daniel Wertz: Ester [assumed spelling]? ^M01:34:40 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:35:05 So how many contemporary articles are still received at the library for North Korea and are there any restrictions on them? >> Sonya Lee: We have currently 48 North Korean titles we receive regularly. And we have a long paid really comprehensive selection area but because we are getting lot of those Korean scholars compared to South Korea. Actually we don't have any limitation or policy not to acquire that because any materials can be useful and then they entitle to use it freely. So we're still getting a lot of North Korean materials. Even I try to-- I display some children's book. According to library selection criteria, we can acquire a children's book when you have a research value which North Korean childrens who has a lot of research value, because actually we have a few scholars came out just researching children's books. So, to me any North Korean materials has a value on it because still lot of things we don't know. So any items and even I don't expect the area that we are getting really interesting a lot of scholars, for example, these days that invite the North Korean committee and they're like really first, I thought there's a committee there but, you know, really commixing comedy and then crown, you know, you never know. So it's like a really playground, you have to come in and play around to find out what we have. >> Daniel Wertz: And a lot of-- Are these materials made available to the public shortly after the library receives them? >> Sonya Lee: Yes. But anything, you know, coming to the library takes at least-- average of five or six months to finish its logging and then finish binding some cases and then-- so it takes a while but still-- so if you look at the record, for example, we have until-- [inaudible] 2017 December and then I get occasion. That means you don't have after that, of course [inaudible] keep getting it. >> Daniel Wertz: Yeah. >> Sonya Lee: But still we have only available like 2017 and we-- Yeah, so it take some time. >> Daniel Wertz: And for those more contemporary records, are there audiovisual materials in North Korean movies, music, et cetera? Or does it tend to be more textual? >> Sonya Lee: The Asian Division, we collect the printing material mostly. >> Daniel Wertz: OK. >> Sonya Lee: Because we don't have any facility to play the music or soundtrack. I recommend a few titles every year from North Korea but this is not Asian Division position, you know, it's in the motion picture in a special format. So not really-- not that many though. >> James F. Person: There's-- By the way, there's a great article that came out by Andre Schmid. I think it was in-- was it the journal of Asian studies or-- just a couple of months ago that describes work with these materials at the Library of Congress. He's at University of Toronto. He actually has a book that's coming out, I think, later this year or next year, so probably next year. But that really just uses these materials to get it, you know, everyday life in North Korea. In fact, there have been a number of works that have come out in recent years, again, Everyday Life in North Korea, Susie Kim's book on '45 to '50, which uses a lot of the materials at the Library of Congress, I'm sorry, at NARA, at the National Archives. Harrison or Cheehyung Harrison Kim at the University of Hawaii has a book coming out in October. That is about Workers-- it's called "Workers and Toilers", that also uses a lot of materials from the caption records, and I think a lot from the LOC materials. But this is also looking everyday life of the worker after-- but focuses particularly on the post-Korean War period, OK. >> Daniel Wertz: So it sounds like you got a lot of book to read after yours, James. >> James F. Person: But theirs is coming out first. >> Daniel Wertz: So we'll take one last question from [inaudible] and then wrap up. ^M01:39:42 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:40:01 >> Eric Van Slander: You mean from our catalogue or? ^M01:40:07 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:40:12 In some cases, people are starting to crowd source things for our website. The question is how to make it accessible. You know, how would somebody search bring it up? But, yeah, I mean, there's an ongoing effort to try to have the public contribute images in some cases, and then, you know, if possible if those records that the translation comes from are described in our catalogue to actually have a link to the digitized and then the translated, I mean, but it would depend by no means an expert on that. So-- but there's an ongoing effort to-- well, actually the term they're using is our citizen archivists. And not only the translating things that are in foreign languages but also transcribing things that are maybe written in difficult handwriting and that kind of thing. But if you go to our website, you know, you might find more information on it. But-- And my job as a textual reference archivist, meaning paper of records, yeah, I'm not really involved directly in that effort. Yeah. >> Daniel Wertz: All right. Well, please join me in thanking this panel for their excellent discussion today. ^M01:41:30 [ Applause ] ^M01:41:33 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.