Owen Miller (SOAS, University of London)

Reconfiguring a company town in late 1950s North Korea: the role of the Deutsche Arbeitsgruppe at Hŭngnam and the problems of social reproduction

After the end of the Korean War in 1953, the industrial town of Hŭngnam on North Korea’s east coast was in a state of devastation, like most of the country’s other urban areas. Hŭngnam had been a company town since it was first constructed in 1930 by the Japanese conglomerate Nichitsu, but now the destruction of its urban fabric gave the DPRK state the opportunity not just to rebuild but to spatially reconfigure the town in line with the aims of ‘socialist’ developmentalism. This project was given a boost in 1955 when a team of East German architects and town planners, called the Deutsche Arbeitsgruppe (DAG), was sent to reconstruct the town and the neighbouring city of Hamhŭng. This paper investigates the extent to which the space of Hŭngnam was transformed by the DAG plans. It also considers the ways in which the reconfiguration of the town sought to solve problems of social reproduction in a rapidly urbanising and proletarianizing society. It finds that while the DAG project no doubt influenced the shape of the town, its vision was far from completed. While there was a concerted attempt to extend and transform the social welfare facilities of Hŭngnam, they too were incomplete and inadequate during the period of the 5 year plan (1957-1961), due to resource constraints and shifting geo-political alliances.

Owen Miller has taught at SOAS since 2011. Prior to that he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge. He specialises in the social and economic history of modern Korea and teaches courses including: ‘The Other Korea: North Korea since 1945’, ‘East Asian Imperialisms’, and ‘The Making of Modern Korea’. His research interests include: the urban and commercial history of Seoul; state capitalism in East Asia; Korean nationalist and Marxist historiographies; and the social history of North Korea. He has recently completed a monograph examining the history of the North Korean industrial town of Hŭngnam.

Rossella Ferrari (University of Viena).

Performing Postsocialist Futurities: Chinese Theatre, Technology, and the Posthuman

This lecture explores visions of the future in postmillennial Chinese theatre within the theoretical framework of postsocialism. Especially since the pandemic, projections of future-oriented sensibilities and alternative human and posthuman scenarios have emerged on China’s physical and online stages, ranging from technophobic prophecies of digital doom to ambivalent heterotopias and virtual fantasies of escape. Just as the association of futurity and technology permeates both official discourse and popular consciousness, practices of future-making in postsocialist performance frequently intertwine with technological innovation and imagination. One example is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, directed by Li Jianjun as part of a “posthuman trilogy” produced in the early post-pandemic period. This version, in which Kafka’s protagonist is recast as a Chinese delivery driver who transitions into a virtual idol – part human, part vermin, and part cyborg – revisits modernist articulations of alienation, animality, and abjection to offer a critique of labour precarity and media objectification in the context of twenty-first-century digital capitalism.

Rossella Ferrari is Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, and she has previously worked at SOAS University of London, UK. Her research focuses on the contemporary theatre and performance cultures of the Chinese-speaking region. She is the author of Pop Goes the Avant-garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (2012), Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia (2020), and Performance and Postsocialism in Postmillennial China (2025), and co-editor of Asian City Crossings: Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore (2021). She is the Principal Investigator of the research project, “Performing Postsocialism in Twenty-First-Century China” (10.55776/PAT9791923), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). 

Funded by:

• Eurasia Foundation (from Asia)

In partnership with:

• Vicerectorat d’Internacionalització i Multilingüisme de la Universitat de València
• Departament de Teoria dels Llenguatges i Ciències de la Comunicació
• Institut Universitari de la Creativitat i Innovacions Educatives (IUCIE)
• Unitat d’Investigació Japón -Universitat de València (UIJ-UV)