On November 28, 2024, over 100 interested parties from Europe, Russia, Japan, the United States, and Canada met online for the 9th in a multi-year series of webinars on “Viewing the DPRK from Within”, hosted jointly by UPF Canada and UPF-EUME.
This meeting was convened to hear a report from Okkyung Pak, an anthropologist, former Government of Canada official, and Ambassador for Peace, who had just returned from the DPRK in October. Traveling at the invitation of the DPRK, Dr Pak met with academics and extended family members mainly in the Pyongyang area. She also visited her grandfather’s gravesite situated in a special cemetery for heroes and patriots.
Robert Duffy, Secretary-General of UPF Canada introduced the program, inviting our UPF EUME counterpart M. Jacques Marion to add context to the event. M. Marion noted that UPF’s ongoing interest in the DPRK stems in part from the fact that our founders, the Rev. Dr Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Dr Hak Ja Han Moon, were both born in the current DPRK. He also mentioned that UPF International had recently become a co-sponsoring partner in a peace venture with the Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia.
Dr Franco Famularo, President of UPF Canada, then took up the task of moderating the meeting which spanned several time zones and included an interpreter into Korean who joined from the ROK from midnight until 1:30 a.m.
Dr Pak then reported on her trip with PowerPoint slides showing her visiting museums and interacting with academics and extended family members, including some of the grandchildren of her late grandfather, a hero of early North Korean society. Her anthropologist’s eye for social cues led her to positively comment on her observations at the museums and on the lectures she attended with a professor of political science. Emphasis was also made on the determination of the DPRK to be self-reliant in accord with Juche philosophy.
Commenting on Dr Pak’s presentation was Mr. Paul Tija, a Dutch businessman who has been teaching and doing business in the DPRK for many years. He suggested that the time has come once again to resume or begin more extensive engagement with North Korea, and to end punitive measures that tend to isolate rather than intimidate the regime. He said that since the UPF also initiated various projects in the fields of business, culture and tourism, perhaps the UPF could also play a role in making personal contacts with North Koreans possible in the future. One avenue might be through academic exchanges with European or Canadian counterparts.
Mr. Humphrey Hawksley, author, documentarist, and former bureau chief for the BBC in Beijing, who attended the webinar, commented on the need to end the ineffective sanctions based on unrealistic expectations that the DPRK will join the Western system based on 4 or 5-year Western election cycles.
The webinar ended with positive comments from the international president of UPF, Dr Michael Jenkins, who praised the effort to bring a greater understanding of the DPRK that our series represents.