North Korean Depictions of the Future in Text Publications of the Kim Jong-un Era
North Korea is commonly portrayed as a Stalinist curiosity, a state economically and ideologically frozen in time. External narratives about its future are thus often confined to imagining either prolonged stagnation or hypothesized radical transformation, either through collapse or major reform. However, beyond these outsider perspectives, the North Korean state actively constructs and disseminates its own visions of its future(s) as all states do. The primary question this thesis addresses is what key characteristics are associated with the future in contemporary North Korea. The research is conducted by using qualitative content analysis on a variety of data sets from North Korean publications. The materials consist of domestic non-fiction texts in the Korean language, such as future-oriented news media and political writings, from the period of 2012–2023, the first decade of Kim Jong-un’s rule.
The focus of the research is on what the North Korean state hopes, wants, and expects from its own future, and what qualities it associates with modernity, progress and development. By focusing on the contemporary future visions in North Korea, this research explores North Korea’s ideology, historical evolution, and adaptive strategies in response to contemporary challenges and global political shifts. Additionally, the research also provides a better picture of how these aspirations shape the ideological worldview communicated to its citizens and help to maintain the state’s legitimacy. Finally, this study also analyzes the contemporary usage of “socialism” as part of North Korea’s future-making efforts, highlighting both continuity and changes in the political concept by contrasting the current future projections with the past ‘socialist futures’ from North Korea and other socialist states.
Activities
Presentations
- Presentation on research topic (Proposal Workshop, Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures”, Jun 13–15, 2024) [Poster]
- “Another Tomorrow: Revisiting State Socialist Past Futures and Their Legacy” (10th Doctoral Workshop “Why Socialism Matters? Approaches to Research of the Political Idea and the Historical Period”, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia, Aug 28–31, 2024)
- “Contemporary North Korean Depictions of the Future and the Concept of ‘Socialist Civilization’” (Korean Political Studies Colloquium, The Association of Korean Political Studies, online, Apr 11, 2025)
- “War with Nature: State Environmentalism and Green Futures in Contemporary North Korea” (AAS-in-Asia Conference 2025 “Reframing Global Asias: Margins, Modernities, and Mobilities”, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal, Jun 1–4, 2025)
- “Challenges and Prospects of Researching State-Driven Future Projections: The Case of North Korea” (SEAA-SNU Anthropology 2025 Conference “Shaping Futures: East Asia as Practice”, The Society for East Asian Anthropology (American Anthropological Association) and Seoul National University, Department of Anthropology, Seoul, South Korea, Jul 14–16, 2025)