Background: the limits of studying North Korean history
Methodology and Sources in the Study of North Korean History
Methodology has always been an elusive concept in the study of history, especially that of North Korea. One cause of this problem is the limitation in acquiring information about North Korea. There are four available sources of information on North Korea:
- Official information
- Interviews with defectors and visitors
- Declassified intelligence reports
- Captured documents
The first class of information, those provided directly by the North Korean regime, are not to be entirely dismissed as mere propaganda, as they consist of writings and speeches by its national leaders and official media outlets, many of which serve as directives to be abided by all. However, the weaknesses of official information from North Korea are their small amount and monolithic nature that keeps analysts in the dark about the formation, reception, and result of state programs. That is why defectors from North Korea, especially those who belonged to the upper echelons of state hierarchy are keenly sought after. Some such individuals, including Hwang Jang-yop, a high-ranking Korean Workers Party member and architect of the official North Korean state ideology, made notable contributions to outsiders' understanding of North Korea. However, as there is only so much reliable information that one person can expound about a state that is so successful in guarding its secrets, this source of information should only be seen as one piece of a large, constantly self-changing puzzle. Given that even among North Korean elites, only few hold information of crucial, lasting value, it is unlikely for visitors, blinded both by their own preconceptions and the censorship from authorities, to be valuable informants. Declassified reports from governments dealing with North Korea can be decisive in understanding specific aspects of North Korean history related to foreign relations, as seen in the case of the former Soviet diplomatic archives that added weight to the argument that Stalin had played a decisive role in the North Korean invasion of the South, but such information are not insider accounts, hence limited in scope and impact when used without understanding of the internal workings of North Korea.
Using the "Caputured Enemy Documents" Archives
Fortunately for scholars of North Korea, there is one archive of sources that is superior to others. It is the archive of documents captured by US troops during the brief occupation of much of North Korea in the early stages of the Korean War. Thanks to the lack of Korean-language specialists in the US military at the time, documents ranging from state secrets to children's diaries were indiscriminately captured, allowing scholars access not only to intentions behind state programs but also the reception of state policies by the populace. No scholar has managed to sort through all of the material to date, but it is estimated that the archives contain over 1.6 million pages of documents.[1] Although the documents therein are from the year 1953 at the latest, it is still the richest and most complete source of publicly accessible information about any period of North Korea’s 70-year history. Considering the lasting significance of the foundational moment of the state in 1948, the dated information may have enduring impact on understanding present-day North Korea.
Not many scholars have ventured into this archive, and it appears that the presence of it only became known in the late 1970s, but those who did made the most out of it: not only the information from the archive itself, but the fact that they entered uncharted territory, almost the same way humanity stepped foot on the moon. To this day, there exists no exhaustive catalogue of all the documents in the said collection, and those who cited the archive in its entirety in their works about the "origins" of some aspect of North Korea-related problem appear to be engaging in an effort tantamount to taking a few steps on the surface of the moon and making conclusions about the nature of the moon as a whole. One such book, in which the author publishes a 23-page bibliography including several United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) "Record Groups" alongside mountains of other document collections and secondary sources, is The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes. Published in 1981, the book ignited an impassioned debate on the issue of who is to be blamed for the outbreak of the Korean War. In another sense, however, the book gave birth to competition for ever longer bibliographies on the matter of the "origins of the Korean War," some of which have amounted to 33 pages in five languages.[2]
Whether these books should be trusted would depend entirely on the epistemic worldview of the reader. On the surface, all of these authors were bestowed serious degrees from elite universities, went through evaluation by other academics in related fields and disciplines, and had their books published by some reputable university press. However, such credentials will not answer the questions that arise in the minds of any skeptical reader who read through these books: how are those multi-million page archives cited in the back of the book distilled into a single volume? While these PhD authors may be qualified to be granted a PhD from those who have the right to perform such actions at universities, that in no way qualifies them to provide an accurate representation of 10 million-plus pages to answer a slew of questions spanning many distant countries over many decades. There is no methodology section in these works, meaning that no part of their research is replicable, and only those who have the motivation to enter the archives will get any close to verifying the arguments. That many of these historians are simultaneously activists in the cause of the political camp his work is aligned with only amplifies the reader’s suspicion that the work is a product of confirmation bias. This is not to dispute the said historians' general conclusions about North Korean history, but rather to point out the hazards of relying on existing scholarship created by traditional methods and nondigital tools.
Avoiding Confirmation Bias
Fortunately, today’s researchers have data analysis technologies at their disposal that will enable them to overcome bias. Although human judgment may never be ruled out of humanities study, used appropriately the data sciences can reduce unscientific practices during macro-analyses of large amounts of text. This is what historians should aim for, particularly in writing potentially contentious political histories like that of Korea, which has an impact on real world politics and the security of large numbers of people. A caveat, before we proceed, is that digital tools are no panacea to the problems of current scholarship, and no whole truth will emerge from using these tools. However, the point of this digital history exercise is to assess the possibilities using new technologies, and to leave a record of replicable methodology for other researchers even if this attempt fails.