Abstract

North Korea is constantly in the news, yet few know anything about the “hermit kingdom”; it is the most oppressive society on Earth and has suffered terrible famines, yet there has been no hint of a revolution; it is relatively small and weak, yet constantly strikes a belligerent posture. This talk provides an introduction to the extreme ideology and Orwellian methods of social control that make North Korea tick.

Joshua is a PhD candidate at Pembroke College Cambridge. A graduate of Yale and Columbia Law School, he wrote his undergraduate dissertation on North Korean official ideology and worked at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing on North Korea-related issues. While at the embassy, he co-wrote the first version of a primer on North Korea still given to Canadian diplomats assigned to work in the region. Now a ommercial lawyer, his PhD work focuses on the esolution of international business disputes but he has maintained an amateur interest in North Korea in particular and East Asian politics in general.