Welcome to New Lecturer - Marc Joseph

I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Marc Joseph several months ago about Choson Exchange. Marc contacted us as he was excited about our mission, and we are just as excited about his interest. Marc will serve us as a lecturer and advisor to our business and legal training programs in Pyongyang. Bio

Marc Joseph is a co-founder of Granite Ridge LLP, an investment and advisory firm. Mr. Joseph has over twenty years of high-level investment and businesss experience. At Templeton he managed international and global equity funds and had top-decile performing mutual funds. He served as the director of Templeton’s smaller companies research team, was previously responsible for Templeton’s Korea research coverage, and had direct responsibility for over $4 billion of assets. He was also a partner at Scudder where he managed all of the firm’s institutional international accounts and was directly responsible for over $10 billion of assets. Mr. Joseph has also served as chief investment officer of a registered investment advisor and has worked as a management consultant with McKinsey. Mr. Joseph sits as a judge pro tem in Los Angeles Superior Court. Mr. Joseph has a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School (magna cum laude, Sears Prize, Law Review editor), an MBA from Harvard Business School (high honors, Baker Scholar, Loeb Rhoades Fellow), and a BS in Computer Science from the College of William & Mary (high honors, first in class). Mr. Joseph has recently served as faculty for corporate finance courses for McKinsey management consultants globally. Mr. Joseph holds a real estate broker’s license and is a member of the California bar.

Business Partnerships - Building Our Knowledge Base

We have been actively developing our partnerships with businesses that either operate in North Korea, once operated there, or are considering operating there. The purpose of this is to tap the advice of business leaders in building a knowledge base of key issues in North Korea that need to be overcome in order to promote economic development. This will help us contextualize the training we conduct and raise our impact in these sessions.

So far, we have been successful in reaching out to a broad stratum of businesses and have benefited greatly from their advice and feedback. As we move ahead, we will consider how we can more systematically build materials using this knowledge base.

If you know anyone who could serve as an advisor on this initiative, do email us at CEteam@chosonexchange.org.

Recruitment for Positions in Choson Exchange

A key constraint on our ability to build the organization is the lack of entrepreneurial, intelligent and dedicated individuals to lead our programs. We are looking for volunteers with a passion for our work to lead some initiatives on a part-time basis. Interested individuals should send an email with a resume or CV and cover letter to soojin.lim@chosonexchange.org and CEteam@chosonexchange.org. Economics & Business Training Coordinator:

We need a dedicated and entrepreneurial volunteer able to formulate and execute a strategy for our training programs in North Korea in the areas of economics and business. This will involve discussing with our advisors, North Korean participants and trainers topics for teaching and an appropriate pedagogy. The coordinator will also study the body of knowledge and translate it into actionable steps promoting economic growth that are implementable in the short-term. The coordinator will design our training seminars in ways that engages our audience and communicates this message.

As a side project, the individual should be able to work on a project studying other technical assistance programs to distill what works, what does not, and how we can increase the impact of such programs

Ideal candidate: Dedicated, entrepreneurial and able to transform knowledge into action points with an advanced degree in economics or background in economics and/or business. Strong understanding of North Korean economic situation and institutions as well as development trajectory and issues in transition/emerging economies. Korean and Chinese language skills are strong pluses. Strong interest in North Korean issues is a must.

Legal Training Coordinator:

Same as the above except that the candidate should have legal training. Knowledge of investment and trade laws as well as legal issues in transition economies or emerging markets would be a strong plus. We are looking at the possibility of launching something in this area next year possibly in collaboration with law schools in the US and one in the UK.

Business Development Manager

Given fluctuations in funding with political trends, we are looking at developing more stable sources of funding to support our work. This position entails developing our program organizing academically-oriented trips to universities and other academic institutions in North Korea. These trips should fulfill two purposes: one is to seek out academics or students with an interest in initiating academic collaboration or research with North Korea and provide them with a platform to explore these opportunities. The other is to support our training programs using surplus revenues from such trips.

Ideal candidate: Dedicated, entrepreneurial with the experience or ability to handle the various logistical, strategic and operational aspects of setting up a business unit. This will involve handling aspects from marketing to logistics to design. Ability to think creatively about travel itinerary is important. Korean and Chinese language skills are strong pluses.

New Partnerships and Cheonan's Impact on Our Work

I have just finished several important meetings over the last two weeks and will be attending several more over the next few weeks to finalize some partnerships that will enhance our ability to deliver high quality training in Pyongyang, send North Koreans abroad for academic training and to deepen relationships with individuals in North Korea. Some of the recently established partnerships include prominent academic institutions, international institutions and companies. The Cheonan incident is a tragic and depressing backdrop for our work. While it does not appear that any upcoming sanctions will prevent us from fulfilling our work, we will be actively monitoring the situation. On the other hand, incidents such as this underscores the importance of sharing knowledge to build a consensus and common understanding in the region, which we are actively trying to do in North Korea.

Summary of Team Discussions for April

There are a lot of interesting discussions within our group on how we can and should increase our impact - most of the ideas never see daylight, but it is these discussions that make working with the rest of my teammates an amazing experience. A brief round up of some discussions: How do we measure impact of our work rigorously: Pinquan and Me How do we leverage the expertise of others in delivering OpenCourseWare: Luke and Me How do we reach out in South Korea: Soojin How do we brand our work in North Korea: Peter and Luke How do we develop sustainable financing models: James and Will What are the funding needs we have in order to scale up our programs: Peter and Me

Apologies if I missed anyone. I have been traveling extensively and I know that my mailbox is flooded.

Summer Begins

Posts will be intermittent as everyone heads into the summer. It is a period of transition for everyone but now that we have finally put together everything (something we should have done two years ago when this effort really started in earnest), things are looking good. This summer will be a busy month for me as there will be a series of really interesting and important meetings: 1. Early May - St Gallen Symposium in Switzerland (Trying to meet Egyptian investors in North Korea to pitch for their support on our education project)

2. Mid-May - Travel in Turkey and Syria (A major to-do item after reading books on Syria’s political organization)

3. Late May - Receive award at World Bank Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics in Sweden for work on legal structures for youth entrepreneurship (Chance to tap Bank’s expertise to provide content to North Korea and meet the Swedes working on technical assistance to North Korea)

4. Mid July - Receive award at Australia National University’s East Asia Forum for political analysis in an article (Chance to meet Australians working on technical assistance to North Korea)

One of the ideas I am thinking of exploring is for all the groups offering technical assistance to North Korea in certain fields should have some knowledge sharing or coordinator. A rudimentary database with dates of events, participant groups, content and feedback would be helpful for everyone to improve their work.

NK Fun Fact: Communicating with North Koreans

Outside of North Korea, I stay in touch with my counterparts in Pyongyang through email. They use one email address for the entire organization, which somehow miraculously routes incoming emails to the right person. I never know if something gets lost along the way, but I am keeping that question on my agenda for my next visit. Perhaps one way they keep track of whom the email is meant for is not just content or who it is addressed to, but by the email of the sender. A North Korean might be assigned to receive registered email addresses only. This could explain the following facts:

1. Unsolicited emails normally never get a response 2. It took a long time to persuade my counterparts to switch the email they were sending replies to. Even if I sent an email by my Gmail account, they would reply to my school email.

All these are conjectures from a small sample size.

Also, the language they use occasionally remind me that the culture gap exists, and that it is important to close it. A counterpart used to sign off his email by wishing me "world frightening success" in my research. I would just settle for someone reading it.

Team Meet Up at Boston

Choson Exchange will have a get-together for team members on May 13 in Boston at Harvard University. Given how we have expanded so rapidly this year, this will be an exciting meet and a great opportunity for everyone to get to know everyone else.

Relevance of the OCW Model

We have been discussing on ways of incorporating the OCW model to deliver educational materials to the North Koreans. Increasingly, universities are using various forms of OCW to share information with the public, where lectures are posted as webcasts and Columbia University even has clips on iTune U for download. While the model provides cost savings through distance learning, there are certain issues, which include the learning culture in DPRK and the specificity of the taught subject that needs to be address in order for it to be relevant to the North Koreans. These various concerns will be addressed using the architectural discipline as an example. Learning Culture

The architectural discipline is largely dependent on the learning culture rather than pure knowledge, which means that even if we have all the information made readily available for the North Koreans, students may find it hard to apply to their context. For example, lectures on digital fabrication in architecture would not be relevant if there are no equipments available to produce these prototypes. Furthermore, even if equipments are available, students may not use it if the university’s learning culture is not in digital fabrication design. This is the case for many Asian universities where advanced fabrication equipments are underutilized because it is not part of the university’s culture to pursue such research.

Specificity of Subject

Furthermore, the architectural discipline is extremely vast and loosely defined, for example, a person's interest can range from the philosophical and political nature of architecture to the cutting edge construction techniques. The various DPRK universities together with the Paektusan Academy of Architecture are already producing architects who can perform the basic tasks of an architect. Therefore, we are hoping to value add to their education through introducing a wide range of subjects while tailoring to suit DPRK’s context.

Joint Research Studio

To ensure the relevancy of the OCW model, perhaps it would be most effective to establish a joint research studio between North Korean architecture students and a partnering university researching on a specific aspect of DPRK architecture. Through this common research topic, theoretical knowledge and technical skills can be transferred in the most relevant way. Examples of such twinning architectural research programs include collaboration between Tsinghua and Penn, or Tongji and Yale, where students spend a couple of weeks at each university to share their research.

Studying the Symbolism and Purpose of the Mass Games

The Mass Games is a propaganda spectacle in North Korea involving 100,000 performers in synchronized performance. Recently, a researcher approached me suggesting an interesting project bringing drama students and religious studies students over to study this phenomenon and its symbolism. He is interested in understanding what the activity means to North Koreans using interpretative methods. This looks like an interesting opportunity which we hope to explore next year.