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A Seance with the Living: the Intelligibility of the North Korean Landscape

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Book cover North Korea in the New World Order

Abstract

There are reported to be twenty different kinds of Kim Il Sung badge but no-one in the west has yet been able to decipher the hidden code. The landscape of north Korea may seem similarly impenetrable in its coded symbolism. Nonetheless, it is hoped that an attempted reading can yield insights which will help reduce the aura of exotic otherness that for decades has surrounded the régime and its approach to the material world.

It is the duty of communists to master and remake nature. Kim Il Sung, 1981.2

I wish to thank Janet Townsend, Mike Crang, Diana Pritchard and members of the Anglo-Indian Seminar in Mussoorie for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The responsibility for the views expressed remains mine.

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Notes

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© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Atkins, P. (1996). A Seance with the Living: the Intelligibility of the North Korean Landscape. In: Smith, H., Rhodes, C., Pritchard, D., Magill, K. (eds) North Korea in the New World Order. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24981-7_11

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