Shinyoung Kwon: Authoritarian roots of North Korea’s neighborhood associations

Dr. Shinyong Kwon joins this week’s episode to discuss how neighborhood associations — known today as inminban in the DPRK — have been used as tools of governance, social indoctrination and moral authority. She explains how these associations originated from East Asian communal traditions but were reshaped under Japanese colonial rule to serve wartime mobilization and state control and traces how both Koreas retained and adapted the system post-liberation. Dr. Shinyoung Kwon holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago and did postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge. She now lives in the United States. Her book Moral Authoritarianism: Neighborhood Associations in the Three Koreas, 1931–1972 was published in November 2023.  About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists. NK News subscribers can listen to this and other exclusive episodes from their preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide at nknews.org/private-feed.