Donna Lee Kwon, OC’93, assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Kentucky, gave a lecture titled “Parody to Humanity: Media Representations of North Korea in the Age of Social Networking and Youtube” on Tuesday as part of the Oberlin Korean Students Association Conference.

Kwon was a double-degree student at Oberlin, majoring in Piano Performance and Women’s Studies. She began her talk by outlining the dominant American parodies of North Korea and then proceeded to explain what else is out there on the Internet and other forms of media on North Korea, paying particular attention to musical genres and styles. Kwon described the western media portrayal of North Korea as a binary of either a war-mongering totalitarian state or a satirical depiction, with the given example of jokes on Korean musician PSY.

Kwon used the 2004 film Team America:World Police as an example of an American parodist representation of North Korea.

Team America further perpetuates misconceptions that the Western world’s imagination has created about North Korea. Kwon went on to discuss the dominant discours- es presented to Americans on the citizens of North Korea as being brainwashed citizens. “This kind of othering decontextualizes political aims and ambitions of the North Korean government and promotes an ironic stance on North Korea,” said Kwon.

“It has become ‘cool’ to make fun of North Korea,” said Kwon. She corroborated this claim by explaining how humor is a natural reaction to fear, especially fear of the unknown.

Kwon presented the audience with personal anecdotes from her own trip to North Korea with an educational group a few years ago. She explained that during one of the most uncomfortable situations on the trip, when her group was shown the mausoleum of Kim Il-sung in the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, members of the tour were cracking jokes.

Later in her talk, Kwon focused on the kinds of materials that are produced in North Korea. The outpouring of this kind of material has allowed for ethnomusicologists like Kwon to have more information for analysis and understanding of North Korea’s troubled history.

Kwon went on to describe the four major musical styles that have emerged since the creation of the DPRK in 1948. These styles are categorized as an “emphasis on collectivism,” “the galloping horse movement,” “the creation of people’s music” and Juche — the idea that citizens are masters of their country’s development. The combination of these movements has led to a homogenization of genres with little influence coming from other regions of the world. Only recently has South Korean popular culture proliferated to the masses of North Korea.

Kwon concluded with remarks on how traditional music of North Korea has remained the norm and popular even though it appears to be very dated to other cultures. This lag in catching up to the rest of the world can be attributed to the isolationist atmosphere that the DPRK government is constantly promoting. Kwon urged that the ironic ethos that western culture gives to North Korea should be used to understand its puzzling culture.