August 10, 2021

North Korean New Databases

Hyokyoung Yi

When the pandemic hit last spring, the UW Libraries quickly established the COVID-19 Emergency Needs Fund to help our faculty and students quickly transition to remote learning and research. Our first round of purchases from this fund provided access to essential resources for autumn quarter courses. For the second round, I requested two high priority Korean studies resources, both of which colleagues approved after careful review. They are KPM: Chosŏn ŏllon chŏngbo kiji 조선언론정보기지 and NK PRO, both news databases focusing on North Korea. There has recently been great demand for these databases from graduate students who cannot access the library’s North Korean newspapers or microfilms collections. These online sources provided the only access to North Korean newspapers during the Libraries’ physical closure. While the KPM database offers Korean language newspapers, NK PRO provides North Korean news in English, supporting English-language based learning and research across many disciplines. We were able to invite NK PRO’s vendor to provide a demonstration over Zoom in April. Participants acquired a deeper understanding of both this database and companion resources NK News and KCNA Watch. 

KPM Database(Korea Media Co., Ltd.)

NK PRO Database(NK Consulting, Inc.)