This year’s project kicked off with KSM running the 2nd PTS in Seoul from May through to July, again covering history, food, music and other cultural topics. The first Incheon PTS, started at the end of June and ran through to the end of August. There will be a tour to Ganghwa Island (separated from North Korea by the Han River at a distance of less than two kilometers) to complete the Incheon PTS once the COVID situation allows. In the final session of both programmes, having prepared in small groups, participants designed and presented their own bespoke holiday tours of Pyongyang for the rest of those present. The programmes then concluded with the presentation of ‘symbolic’ North Korea entry visas to participants and a meal of traditional Pyongyang food supplemented with North Korean Taedonggang beer and Pyongyang soju. Expanding on the programme was a PTS ‘Intensive course’ of three lectures delivered by Gyeonggi University professor Ahn Chan-mo titled “Meeting Pyongyang through City Planning and Architecture”. Around 50 people participated in that online programme which covered the role of ideology in city planning and building design in Pyongyang’s reconstruction post Korean War and thereafter, a comparison between Pyongyang’s architecture and layout with that of Seoul’s, as well as a look at the visible changes in Pyongyang in the last ten years since Kim Jong-un came to power.
As part of the programme this year KSM organized the ‘NK Concert with Commentary’ on June 16th at the Perugio Art Hall in downtown Seoul. The concert aimed to increase understanding of North Korean art through the performance and introduction of North Korean classics and also to contribute to creating a base for the future expansion of inter-Korean cultural exchange. As well as a singer and a pansori singer (traditional Korean dramatic song), the performance included a North Korean gayaguem (different strings to the South Korean version of a Korean harp) and a changsaenab (woodwind instrument developed in North Korea in the 1960s). The gayaguem player, Park Soon-ah, is a third generation Korean-Japanese musician who attended Jochongnyeon schools (조총련계 민족학교) in Osaka before developing his command of the instrument at the Pyongyang National University of Music and Dance. In total thirteen North Korean songs were performed at the concert.
Plans for the last quarter of the year include another edition of the Seoul PTS and a photography exhibition bringing together people’s photos of Pyongyang (including shots KSM staff have taken in their approximate 600 visits to North Korea). Through these cultural and educational programmes KSM aims to provide a new angle from which to look at North Korea that transcends the usual security discourses. KSM is providing a space here in the South for open discourse about North Korean culture and to reflect on what that means to South Koreans. These projects are being progressed as part of a broader KSM strategy to promote mutual recognition between South and North, a prerequisite for Korean peace and reconciliation, whilst also laying the ground for the resumption and expansion of sustainable inter-Korean cultural exchange in the future.
