From patriarchal socialism to grassroots capitalism: The role of female entrepreneurs in the transition of North Korea

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Since the collapse of North Korea's command economy in the 1990s, a large number of women have become entrepreneurs. This remarkable feature of North Korean marketisation cannot be adequately explained by female entrepreneur (FE) deficit premises, which highlight women's supposed shortcomings in what is considered a male enterprise. Based on in-depth interviews with female North Korean defectors, and viewing entrepreneurship as a catalyst for socio-cultural change, this paper questions how FEs emerged in North Korea and whether women's market participation influences gender relations, or attitudes toward the North Korean regime. There have been noticeable changes in gender roles, son preference and choice of marriage partners. Our findings suggest that female entrepreneurship has the potential to both challenge and support the North Korean system. This research significantly advances scholarship on gender and entrepreneurship by adopting a constructionist approach to gender and transcending the prevalence of descriptive analysis of gendered entrepreneurial practices

Fashion and the Social Construction of Femininity in North Korea

© 2017 Asian Studies Association of Australia. In this paper we argue that North Korea’s socioeconomic transformation has had a profound and yet under-appreciated impact on the social construction of femininity. Drawing on 45 in-depth interviews with North Korean refugees, interviews with regular visitors to North Korea and NGO workers, and our own field notes from trips to North Korea, we analyse changes over three discernible (yet overlapping) economic periods: the 1960s–90s pre-famine period; the mid-1990s to late 2000s grassroots capitalism era; and the current Kim Jong Un period of quasi-capitalism. As dress is a discursive daily practice of gender, we focus on the practice of femininity as shown through North Korean women’s fashion choices. We argue that images of women in state propaganda have been shaped primarily by male leaders, but norms of femininity have shaped, and also been shaped by, women themselves. That is, the recent trend for North Korean women to dress in hyper-feminine styles can be explained in terms of women remaking themselves and planning their future lives

The onward migration of North Korean refugees to Australia: In search of cosmopolitan habitus

© 2017 Kyungja Jung, Bronwen Dalton and Jacqueline Willis. Based on assumed common ethnicity, language and culture, and generous settlement programs, South Korea is believed to be the best country for North Korean defectors to restart their lives. This is, however, not necessarily the case. Since the mid-2000s, 2000 to 3000 North Koreans have allegedly settled in the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and EU countries. Despite this trend and its broader implications, the onward migration process of North Korean refugees, together with their motivations and lived experiences, remain poorly addressed in academic research. Drawing from the unique experience of North Korean refugees’ onward movement to Australia, the paper suggests that discarding a North Korean identity and habitus and gaining cosmopolitan habitus are the main reasons behind North Korean defectors’ onward migration. The paper is the first empirical study on North Korean refugees resettled in Australia to adopt habitus as a theoretical framework, and thus provides new insight into migration studies

Chemical Bonding Technology: Direct Investigation of Interfacial Bonds

This is the third Flat-Plate Solar Array (FSA) Project document reporting on chemical bonding technology for terrestrial photovoltaic (PV) modules. The impetus for this work originated in the late 1970s when PV modules employing silicone encapsulation materials were undergoing delamination during outdoor exposure. At that time, manufacturers were not employing adhesion promoters and, hence, module interfaces in common with the silicone materials were only in physical contact and therefore easily prone to separation if, for example, water were to penetrate to the interfaces. Delamination with silicone materials virtually vanished when adhesion promoters, recommended by silicone manufacturers, were used. The activities related to the direct investigation of chemically bonded interfaces are described

Dynamic stability of crack fronts: Out-of-plane corrugations

The dynamics and stability of brittle cracks are not yet fully understood. Here we use the Willis-Movchan 3D linear perturbation formalism [J. Mech. Phys. Solids {\bf 45}, 591 (1997)] to study the out-of-plane stability of planar crack fronts in the framework of linear elastic fracture mechanics. We discuss a minimal scenario in which linearly unstable crack front corrugations might emerge above a critical front propagation speed. We calculate this speed as a function of Poisson's ratio and show that corrugations propagate along the crack front at nearly the Rayleigh wave-speed. Finally, we hypothesize about a possible relation between such corrugations and the long-standing problem of crack branching.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures + supplementary informatio