"The Accusation" – an evening on North Korea

On November 15, 2011, we gathered at the Pluralistic Spiritual Community Center of Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom, for an evening in honor of the publication of the book "The Accusation" by a North Korean writer writing under the name "Bandi": a book that was smuggled to the West about 20 years ago, and published now in Hebrew by the publisher Ahuzat Beit.

The speakers were:
Dr. Alon Levkowitz, Head of the Department of Social Sciences and Citizenship at Beit Berl College, lecturer on Korean studies at Bar-Ilan University and researcher on the Korean Peninsula’s foreign policy and relations with the Middle East. His lecture dealt with the question of defectors and improvement of relations between North and South Korea.

Dr. David Shuster, a historian of modern Korea and a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and dean’s list postdoctoral student at the Zvi Yavetz School of History at Tel Aviv University. In the year 2000 he spent a semester at the Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea, and the title of his lecture was: "Exodus Literature: What Can It Teach Us about North Korea?"

There followed a fascinating round of questions and answers with the audience.