Dr Virginie Grzelczyk

Reader/Associate Professor in International Relations Aston University

  • Birmingham

Dr Grzelczyk's research focuses on security relationships over the Korean Peninsula and especially about North Korea.

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Biography

Dr. Virginie Grzelczyk is a Reader in International Relations at Aston University and the Head of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.

She holds a MA and PhD in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, and a MA in Diplomacy and Security from Ewha University.

Virginie's research focuses on security relationships over the Korean Peninsula, and especially about North Korea, with publications spanning the Six-Party Talks process, North Korea’s energy Security Dilemma, Korean identity in the context of reunification and the concept of crisis in Northeast Asia.

Her latest Leverhulme Trust project focuses on the Politics of Toys in Conflict and Post-Conflict Spheres.

Areas of Expertise

Korean Peninsula
Northeast Asia Politics
Politics of North Korea
Foreign Policy Towards North Korea
North Korea

Education

University of Maryland

PhD

Government and Politics

2006

University of Maryland

MA

Government and Politics

2006

Ewha Womans’ University

MA

Diplomacy and Security

2002

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Media Appearances

Trump-Kim summit: North Korean leader emerges a clear winner as Donald Trump reverts to type

The Conversation  online

2018-06-12

At first glance, it is easy to call the meeting between US president, Donald Trump, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, “historic” and “unprecedented”. It was the first meeting between sitting leaders of the two countries, which are still technically in a state of war.

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North Korea: is war on the cards again?

The Conversation  online

2018-05-25

It looks like the party everyone was excited about won’t take place after all. After a few days of hinting that his mooted June 12 meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong-un looked compromised, Donald Trump sent a “Dear John” letter to Kim bluntly informing him that the meeting is off.

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North Korea wants to a strike a deal – is Trump the right man for the job?

The Conversation  online

2018-04-29

After a fearful year of brinksmanship, the recent summit between South Korean president Moon Jae-In and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un was a beautiful moment of hope. The two leaders stepped back and forth over the Military Demarcation Line between their two countries and shared Korean cold noodles brought specially from a famed Pyongyang restaurant. They planted a tree and fed it water from two rivers, North Korea’s Taedong and South Korea’s Han.

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Research Grants

Principal Investigator, “No Child’s Play: Politics of Toys in Conflict and Post-Conflict Spheres.”

Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship

2018-2019 – Full award to Aston University

Articles

Displaying North Korean Children: From Local to Global Memories

Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures

2022

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) looms large in international political and security spheres because of its harsh domestic dictatorship as well as its pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is a country that is difficult to access physically because of its controlled borders, and the evolution of North Korean society is clouded by the propaganda that is routinely dispatched by the government. As a result of the state’s focus on militarization and regime survival, specific population groups are often ignored in broader debates about North Korean society, yet they provide important insights into the paradoxical nature of the North Korean society; children are one such group. While there is plenty of evidence, gathered by NGOs and IGOs, that North Korean children suffer from both physical and emotional violence in North Korea, they are also celebrated and revered by the government: the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace in Pyongyang, for instance, is seemingly dedicated to children’s after-school activities and well-being. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the DPRK during International Children’s Day in 2019, this article examines the place of children in the construction of North Korean national identity and exposes how children are both celebrated and utilized to become “memorable,” supporting the North Korean government’s survival goals via large-stage installations such as the gymnastic Mass Games.

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Neither This Nor That: Understanding North Korea via Role Theory

Awkward Powers: Escaping Traditional Great and Middle Power Theory

2022

This chapter presents the DPRK within a set of dichotomous identities that highlights an ambivalent, alternative and essentially awkward power position within the international system. It rests on Sociological and Social Psychology assumptions surrounding Role Theory and looks at the DPRK’s own representation as a (1) victim/champion of world politics, (2) struggling/leading economic force, and (3) independent/interdependent power in a global context. It concludes that the DPRK is unlikely to move to a small state status as this would mean relinquishing its nuclear weapons, yet those very weapons are equally unlikely to be accepted by the international community as a sign that the DPRK is a great power. This leaves the Korean peninsula in a relatively stable period of awkwardness, and the DPRK as an awkward middle power.

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The Politics of Toys: What Potential for Inter-Korean Reconciliation?

Asian Studies Review

2022

This article focuses on toys that are associated with war, weapons and violence (‘conflict toys’), which hold particular salience in parts of the world that have undergone conflicts, such as the Korean peninsula. Using sources ranging from economic reports to defector testimonies and field research in both South and North Korea, the article shows that despite largely different economic and political paths, the two Koreas have developed toy markets that address shared histories. The article suggests that conflict toys can perform an important function in inter-Korean relations: they allow the two Koreas to experience and potentially transcend the status quo. The article further argues that both Koreas can polarise their populations quickly through a controlled propaganda machine in the North, and an omnipresent globalised culture in the South: in both cases, a political message of either conflict or reconciliation could reach many children quickly via toys, and thus be a driver for change for anyone who was willing to use such levers.

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