Establishment of the North Korean Academy of Sciences and the Start of Academic Exchanges Between the Soviet Union and North Korea in the 1950s

Abstract

The article covers the history of the establishment and first years of work of the highest-level scientific institution of North Korea, i.e. the Academy of Sciences of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The author undertakes the task of analysing the influence that cooperation between North Korea and the Soviet Union in science had on these processes. The article provides the background and reasons for the creation of the North Korean Academy of Sciences, compares its Charter with that of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union which was in effect at the time, as well as points out some publications in the Academy’s main printed periodical, Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the DPRK. Based on materials from the Foreign Policy Archives of the Russian Federation, Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, North Korean publications from the 1950s, and works by contemporary Russian and South Korean historians, the article examines how cooperation with the Soviet Union influenced the activities of the North Korean Academy of Sciences. In addition, it analyses key documents that set the formal framework for the interaction between the two countries’ academies of sciences, such as the Agreement on Scientific and Technical Cooperation Between the USSR and the DPRK (1955) and the Agreement on Scientific Cooperation Between the USSR Academy of Sciences and the DPRK Academy of Sciences (1957), as well as provides concrete examples of Soviet-North Korean scientific collaboration on agriculture and geological exploration during the 1950s. A conclusion is drawn that the North Korean academy was heavily dependent on cooperation with the USSR and was copying the organizational structure of the Soviet academy. At the same time, in a number of areas, agriculture and chemistry in particular, Soviet scientists adopted the methods of their North Korean colleagues. However, the level of North Korean science in the period under study was rather low.