Central & East European, Russian & Eurasian Studies (Erasmus Mundus International Master)

Article about the visit published in the newsletter of the Korean Association of Slavic-Eurasian Studies, pages 6-9 (in Korean). 

 

Study on the process of establishing diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea and Hungary through the confidential documents of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Hungary signed a treaty of amity with North Korea in 1948, because they shared the same ideology. As for the archive, the treaty meant that both countries began to communicate regularly and periodically exchange official documents, and these documents would be kept in the archive. However, South Korea prohibited communications with socialist states because of the Korean War and the Cold War, so it was impossible to access the documents in the archive at that time. But the ex-socialist states experienced regime change, and as the countries changed, the public demand, on political grounds, for documents of the past regime became quite profound.

I would like to introduce the National Archives of Hungary and the documents related to South and North Korea in brief. The main section focuses on the diplomatic relationship between Hungary and South Korea. With some documents, I tried to introduce rather than analyze. The study of these documents will encourage scholars and research workers to observe modern Korean history on the framework of an emerging paradigm. In particular, I would like to share my research and, from this time onwards, continue co-working with specialists in various fields, such as political philosophers and historians.

 

Hungary and the North Korean Diaspora

 

Since the middle of the 1990s, more than 25,000 North Koreans have settled in South Korea, and researchers estimate that a further 20,000 North Korean refugees have migrated mainly to China, Southeast Asia, America, and Europe. Many of these refugees cite economic factors as the main motive for their escape, which more or less coincided with the North Korean famine, but before the 1990s there were two other periods that saw relatively large-scale emigration from North Korea, which occurred for other reasons. This paper identifies and compares the three periods, using archival sources from Korea, Hungary, and the former Soviet Union. It also uses the representative case of a North Korean medical student in Hungary to provide a unique perspective on a number of important historical events, including the August Incident in North Korea and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

 

 

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First published: 15 December 2016