By Alek Sigley. I have a very lovely friend who is a professor of Korean studies in Australia and has come on our trips to North Korea twice. Her background is Anglo-Australian, but while a teenager she went on Rotary exchange to Daejon in South Korea and learnt Korean there. Afterwards she studied in Yonsei University in Seoul. Now she speaks Korean fluently. But since it was South Korea where she studied her Korean, the version of Korean she speaks is distinctively South Korean. On her two trips with us she would speak to the local North Koreans in Korean. This for the most part endeared her to them. It opened up possibilities for her to have interesting conversations with some of the people we met who weren’t guides or translators. But there were a couple of occasions where differences between the languages of North and South Korea caused things… [Read More]
Archives for December 2017
A Few Things You may not have Known about the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble: Part 3
By Alek Sigley. In the past two instalments of this series we talked about the significance of the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble first in terms of the stylistic innovations, and secondly in terms of the thematic innovations they brought to the North Korean music world. In this instalment we’ll look at some interesting bits of trivia relating to the group that are not very well known outside of North Korea. Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble on International Tour in Japan Given North Korea’s reputation for being isolated, the fact that the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble went on an international tour in Japan in 1991 may surprise some out there. Not a whole lot is known about this performance, but live videos are available on Youtube, and clips from the performances feature in the music video for “Nice to Meet You” (반갑습니다). A reference to it is also made in this more recent Pochonbo Electronic… [Read More]
