Remco Breuker
(Zaandam, NL, 1972) is a professor of Korean Studies at the University of Leiden. He studied Japanese and Korean, and lived for a time in Seoul while earning a second Master's degree. Breuker collaborated on the first Korean-Dutch dictionary(2002). In 2006, he obtained his doctorate (with distinction) with When Truth is Everywhere: The formation of plural identities in medieval Korea, 918-1170. In 2008, Breuker worked as a researcher at Australia's National University (ANU). Then he worked on the research project Conceptualizing Northeast Asia: World history through the lens of Koryǒ and Liao. Breuker is the acting director of the project History as Social Practice: Unconventional historiographies of Korea. He is editor-in-chief of the e-magazine Korean Histories and an editor with the magazine East Asian History. In 2010 he received the KNAW Heineken Young Scientists Award for Historical Learning for research into Korean identity. Together with Imke van Gardingen he translates contemporary Korean literature.
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Archive available for: Remco Breuker
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North Korea: daily life in a mental dictatorship - the story of the refugee
With: Hassnae Bouazza, Jang Jin-sung, Remco Breuker
Remco Breuker is a true expert on North Korea. While North and South negotiate peace and nuclear disarmament, with and without the US, Breuker warns against optimism, as he recognizes the strategizing of the North Korea's ruthless dictatorship. Despite the negotiations, the daily lives of North Koreans are not likely to improve, as we will hear from the former propaganda poet Jang Jin-sung, who fled to the South. Once he had to sing the praises of the supreme leader, but now he is free to write about whatever he wants. Through poetry and conversation, Breuker and Jang enlightend us on what it is like to live in North Korea's dictatorship of the mind. Moderated by Hassnae Bouazza.
Event curated by Ton van de Langkruis (Writers Unlimited)
Books for sale courtesy of Van Stockum Booksellers -
Voices from the East
Indonesian author Dinar Rahayu wrote a novel about S&M and transsexuality; the dream debut of Austrian-Japanese writer Milena Michiko Flaartitled I Called Him Necktiewas about friendship and humanity; and Tao Yue, a Chinese writer living in the Netherlands, wrote about family ties and changing Chinese society in Shanghai Nocturne. Three different voices from the East, each with their own style, talk with Remco Breuker about their work, their world, and their identity. In English.
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Oxfam Novib PEN Awards
With: Joris van Casteren, Manon Uphoff, Michel Maas, Petra Stienen, Remco Breuker, Samar Yazbek, Sheila Sitalsing
With the PEN Awards Oxfam Novib and Dutch PEN honour writers, journalists and filmmakers who, against the current, and at the risk of their own lives, search for the truth and spread it. Writer an secretary of PEN Netherlands Manon Uphoff will present the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award in Theater aan het Spui, as part of the Writers Unlimited Winternachten festival The Hague. The Syrian writer Samar Yazbek witnessed the brutal violence against demonstrating citizens in her country. She published about it, was severely threatened and consequently had to leave the country.
The other prize winners this year are Enoh Meyomesse (Cameroun), Nargess Mohammadi (Iran), Déo Namujimbo (Congo) and Büþra Ersanlý (Turkey). Samar Yazbek is the only winner present during the ceremony.
The prize-winning ceremony is followed by a debate organised by Dutch PEN about censorship, self-censorship and the ethics of writers, journalists and bloggers, chaired by Volkskrant columnist Sheila Sitalsing. Arabist Petra Stienen, Remco Breuker (a professor and an expert on East Asia), Michel Maas (a correspondent in Indonesia) and writer Joris van Casteren. Prizewinning ceremony is in English, the debate in Dutch.