Faire du terrain en Corée du Nord

Is fieldwork in North Korea possible? Valérie Gelézeau and Benjamin Joinau’s edited volume addresses this question through a heterogeneous combination of introspective travelogues, academic essays, and raw notes as well as “scorias and scolias” (41) documenting the contributors’ past fieldwork and the volume’s editing process. The result is an unorthodox book that challenges academic writing conventions and raises stimulating methodological questions about fieldwork in closed contexts and beyond.Academic research on North Korea has, in the last three decades, benefited from the increasing availability of primary textual sources. While North Korean state archives and many publications remain inaccessible to foreign scholars, overseas collections and diplomatic archives from former socialist states have offered a plethora of (still underexploited) materials, catalyzing the publication of new monographs and articles that have substantially expanded our understanding of the country’s history, society, and culture. This data expansion, however, has had no equivalent in more field-oriented disciplines. Not only does the “field” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) itself remain subject to stringent travel restrictions, scholars who do manage to get in find themselves constantly monitored and adhering to a fixed, often imposed itinerary that leaves little room for “free” direct observation.These conditions have fostered a widespread belief that scientific fieldwork is altogether impossible in North Korea and prompted attempts to find substitutes, such as with Sonya Ryang’s anthropological studies of North Korea “at a distance.”1 Yet, the contributors argue—based on their experience and collaborations with North Korean scholars—there is still much to be done and learned by visiting the DPRK even if the trips do not match the traditionally accepted definitions and processes of fieldwork. It is not fieldwork itself that is impossible, only the standard, dominant way of conducting it. Working in North Korea requires a redefinition of fieldwork and of the ways of writing about it. The volume unfolds as an attempt to delineate what such a new theory and practice of fieldwork may entail.The book is divided in five thematic chapters comprising assemblages of texts, photographs, and drawings by the different contributors. All pages are flanked by wide margins where the editors comment on the contributions and explain their editorial choices. The first chapter outlines the main methodological interventions of the book. Koen de Ceuster’s text offers a criticism of the notion that constant surveillance and controlled visits to propagandistic monuments make fieldwork useless, arguing instead that this experience is essential to understanding the “interpretative frameworks of social reality” in North Korea (36). Besides, control and surveillance are not as unyielding as they might seem. Detailing his relationship with his guides and the artists he came to meet, he shows that “gatekeepers” (39) may become facilitators and even collaborators. Benjamin Joinau’s essay sheds light on the editorial approach of the volume that sought to emphasize the intertextuality of the heterogeneous materials it comprises. The remaining pieces introduce the concept of “thomassons,” vestigial architectural elements that have lost their original purpose, which several of the contributors use in their analysis of Pyongyang. Chapter 2 comprises more factual activity reports written after visits to the DPRK. Valérie Gelézeau’s contribution stands out for its critique of a “phenomenological” (141) and outdated conception of the field as a “reality” to see or discover. In that perspective, fieldwork is indeed impossible in the DPRK, where authorities control what one can see. But once one considers the field from a “cognitive angle,” as a “space of mediation and discussion” with local colleagues and institutions, that impossibility becomes moot even if new difficulties arise around the proper way to conduct and document such fieldwork. Chapter 3 is a collection of photographs taken during the contributors’ visits to the DPRK with aphoristic textual accompaniments. Chapter 4 comprises lists, a lexicon, the program of a Moranbong band concert in translation, and a short commentary on quantum states as a metaphor for North Korean reality in which various states of truth seem to coexist until the observer sees one of them. The final chapter juxtaposes three self-reflective pieces in which the authors retrospectively analyze their emotions during their visit and the impact they had on their work, highlighting an affective dimension of fieldwork that is often neglected in academic writing.The book’s experimental and composite structure is refreshing—albeit at times also puzzling—and efficient. For the diary-like confessionals, the numerous visuals or the unedited email conversations work as constant reminders of all that is or can be lost in the process of formatting the experience of fieldwork for traditional academic discourse. It is, however surprising that despite their strong desire to upend academic norms, the editors stopped at challenging that most traditional support of academic writing: the paper book. Given the emphasis on intertextuality and multimediality and the repository aspect of some subchapters, a digital format would have offered engaging ways to render the multiplicities of this project.The concept of “thomassons,” borrowed from the Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei, is mentioned repeatedly throughout the book, and the search for these urban oddities in Pyongyang is said to have been the “starting point” of the project (17). Despite the apparent importance given to the term, the reader will find little in-depth discussion of its relevance to the study of North Korea and the admission that no actual “thomasson” was spotted in Pyongyang (91). Yet, far from being a weakness, this paradoxical absence/presence is perhaps the best illustration of fieldwork in the DPRK: one comes equipped with a theoretical framework and objectives, only to realize that the most valuable insights were, in fact, unforeseen gleanings.A thought-provoking collection of essays and materials, Faire du terrain en Corée du Nord will provide scholars curious to explore the possibility of fieldwork in North Korea with a valuable set of questions, caveats, and theoretical pathways. The literary quality of some of the contributions, the anecdotes in margins, and the rich visuals will also make it an approachable and thoroughly pleasant read for anyone curious about the DPRK

Art · Geography · Humanities · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies