North Korea's Cultural Diplomacy in the Early Kim Jong-Un Era

Abstract

IntroductionSince the accession to power of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean state has lost no time in establishing the appearance of an accelerated internationalization.1 One important element in this process has been what is, by North Korea's own closed standards, a rather vigorous program of cultural diplomacy. The performing arts have been at the forefront of these exchanges and activities. In 2012, a North Korean symphony orchestra traveled to France, and North Korea's huge "Sea of Blood" opera company toured all over China. Meanwhile, at home, a new brand of North Korean regime-pop, christened the Moranbong Band, was even used to tantalize Western commentators with visions of a North Korean "opening up." Photography exhibitions went forward with the U.S., musical exchanges continued with Norway and Germany, and joint film projects with China also emerged as important elements in cultural diplomacy. These elements are part of a developing North Korean "softpower" strategy which complements and assists the country's diplomatic and strategic goals.When discussing North Korean softpower, however, context matters more than ever before. Spring 2012, the time frame under consideration in this article, was a period of extreme activity by the DPRK on the world stage, culminating in a muchanticipated and -protested missile test on April 13, 2012. Given that the DPRK's cultural diplomacy in that period coincided also with domestic propaganda that was intensely xenophobic even by North Korean standards, it is possible and probably likely that the reasons behind the move to engage in cultural diplomacy in early 2012 were purely tactical. These soft-power efforts thus bear upon North Korean politics of aid as well as nuclear weapons. This is not to say that the efforts were fruitless or not engaged in willingly with the American and French partners who we discuss in this article. In both cases, the DPRK enlisted the collaboration of legitimate partners (the Associated Press and France Radio Orchestra) and an actual audience for their art, music, and a political message thereby. The support of legitimate partner institutions aids in illustrating that cultural diplomacy has served an important and limited success for the Kim Jong-un regime, if only meant to show domestically as a sign of the DPRK's growing internationalism. Finally, looking into the interactions more deeply allows for greater insight into the questions of whether Kim Jong-un's rule represents, portends, or only feigns a bona fide internationalization of the DPRK.IR Theory, Cultural Diplomacy and North Korea's HistoryPower, a somewhat nebulous concept defined succinctly as the ability to affect others, lies at the center of international relations (IR) theory. This concept has traditionally been explained in a bifurcated way, describing how one state affects another state's behavior through some combination of coercion and inducement, an understanding of power best represented by the "carrot and stick" idiom and recorded in the IR dictionary as "hard power." Though realists, neoliberalists, and constructivists are not ineluctably bound to use conventional IR theory analysis, even a cursory reading of the available literature-old and new-reveals the dominance of hard power analysis. Since the end of the Cold War era, however, the introduction of "softpower" opened up an alternative conceptualization of power.2 Softpower emphasizes a state's use of "attraction" to get others to want the same thing they want without resorting to the use of coercion or inducement.3 In other words, softpower augments the state's ability to peacefully project and aggrandize its overall power in the international system. Most importantly, the way a state "attracts" other states is not by threat of military force or financial sanctions, but through the use of cultural resources: cinema, sports, art, literature, rock bands, radio broadcasts, symphony orchestras, and other forms of culture. …