Expanding North Korean narratives
Anthropologist
To the outside world, stories about the lives of North Koreans are exceedingly rare, and stories of the country鈥檚 migrants, even more so.
Anthropologist No毛l Um-Lo (DC 2016) wants to bring those stories to light. Her research reveals the distinct circumstances of diaspora and displacement experienced by a small community of North Korean migrant youth born in China and living in South Korea.
鈥淢y research is helping to create a global understanding of North Korean culture and migration by amplifying the stories of migrants and their children, and by seeing them as people we can learn from,鈥� she says.
The small population No毛l studies includes the children of Chinese men who entered into birth arrangements with North Korean women to raise families in China. Those women later moved to South Korea in search of better lives, forming a community of only a few thousand people.
Today, those children are young adults. They have shallow roots and only conditional citizenship in South Korea, where they are often celebrated as North Korean defectors. Yet many have never set foot in North Korea and effectively grew up with Chinese culture.
No毛l鈥檚 research, supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Education, challenges the global perception of North Korea as a strictly closed society. It also examines issues shared by migrant populations and cultural outsiders worldwide, both today and throughout history.
鈥淥ne impact of my work is showing diaspora is far more expansive than the nation-state conceives of,鈥� No毛l says. 鈥淢y hope is for others to see migrant children in terms of their extraordinary capacity for creativity, negotiation and strategy.鈥�
Story by Elizabeth Speed