Back in the days, I briefly wrote for the English-language blog of the South Korean Ministry of Unification (MOU, 통일부), as part of the “overseas students press corps” (해외상생기자단).
This is from my profile (I was one among the first group of participants, though, not “The 1st MOU journalist”, as the site claims):
He is especially interested in cultural aspects of unifications politics and the different discourses that surround them — the ways North Korea presents itself to the world and, reciprocally, how the “undiscovered country” is represented in literature, art and the media.
Highly motivated after a welcome trip to New York in February 2009, I wrote some articles that got published online, but all of a sudden contact ceased… Was there some change of policy with regard to foreign junior corespondents? Until this day I have no idea… Unfortunately, my last submission (part 2 of a long interview with my Korean teacher Holmer Brochlos on his life between South and North Korea) was never published.
These are my four articles, published between spring and fall 2009 on the MOU’s blog:
- “Strange Days in Pyongyang: Autobiographic Graphic Novel Shows Author’s Struggles in North Korea” Link
- “From Dissident to President, from Compromise to Nobel Prize? Some Personal Thoughts on the Late Kim Dae-jung” Link
- “Studying Korean between Berlin and Pyongyang: Interview with Holmer Brochlos, Korean language lector, conducted by Jan Creutzenberg” (part 1 of 3) Link
- “Hasta la Vista, Kimnator: German TV Presents ‘Dear Leader’ as Killer Robot” (2009) Link
Seoul Stages 