Book Launch
24 Jan 2013
18.00-20.00
Coverage of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) all too often focuses solely on nuclear proliferation, military parades, and the personality cult around its leaders. As the British ambassador to North Korea, John Everard had the rare experience of living there from 2006, when the DPRK conducted its first nuclear test, to 2008, just before Kim Jong Il’s stroke.
While stationed in Pyongyang, Everard’s travels around the DPRK provided him with numerous opportunities to meet and converse with North Koreans. Using his book and his own reminiscences that go beyond the official North Korea, he unveils the human dimension of life in that hermetic nation.
Everard will relay his impressions of the country and its people, his interactions with them, and his observations on their way of life. Just how did the DPRK evolve to its current state and what is the right approach to this most difficult and challenging of states?
John Everard, in a twenty-seven year career as a British diplomat, worked in a variety of countries and was appointed ambassador twice (to Belarus and to Uruguay) before undertaking his final assignment as British ambassador to North Korea. He has served on the boards of various NGOs and he was a visiting fellow at Stanford University in 2010-2011.
Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea by John Everard published by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center/Brookings Institution Press will be launched at this event.
This session will be moderated by Aidan Foster-Carter, Leeds University.
Aidan Foster-Carter is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at Leeds University in England. He has followed Korean affairs for 44 years. Since 1997 he has been a full-time Korea analyst and consultant: writing, lecturing and broadcasting for academic, business and policy audiences in the UK and worldwide. He writes regularly on Korea for, among others; the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Jane’s, Oxford Analytica, NewNations, Comparative Connections and 38North. During 1993-97 he authored a monthly North Korea Report for business, published in Seoul; and from 2000 to 2005 a ‘Pyongyang Watch’ column for Asia Times Online, to which he still contributes. His books include Korea’s Coming Reunification (1992) and North Korea after Kim Il-sung (1994; both EIU).
