Monuments of Power : The North Korean Origin of Nationalist Monuments in Namibia and Zimbabwe

This book is based on Tycho van der Hoogs' Master's thesis 'North Korean monuments in southern Africa: Legitimizing party rule through the National Heroes' Acres in Zimbabwe and Namibia', runner up in the African Studies Centre, Leiden's 2018 Africa Thesis Award. This annual reward for Master's students encourages student research and writing on Africa and promotes the study of African cultures and societies.

Scattered across southern Africa, impressive North Korean monuments celebrate the rise of young, independent nations. Freed from the shackles of colonialism or white settler rule, many southern African states are loyal customers of the North Korean state-owned enterprise Mansudae Art Studio, a firm responsible for the propaganda of the reigning Kim dynasty. In an extraordinary fashion, this mode of Afro-DPRK cooperation merges African nationalism with North Korean socialist realism.

Monuments of Power compares the National Heroes' Acres of Namibia and Zimbabwe tot the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery in North Korea, thus providing a window to explore the largely unknown support offered by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to African liberation movements. This historical background is paramount to understand the influence of the DPRK on post-colonial public history in Africa.

This book will not only interest African Studies specialists working on the liberation wars in Africa, it is also relevant to scholars in Korean Studies examining North Korea's international ties and authors in the field of heritage studies.

Tycho van der Hoog (1993) is a PhD student at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University. He holds a bachelor's degree in history (2014), a bachelor's degree in political science (2014), a research master's degree in African Studies (2016) and a master's degree in history (2017) from Leiden University. Tycho has conducted extensive fieldwork in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

Year of publication: 2019
Series: African Studies Collection
Volume: 74