Sogang University in South Korea Hosts SLU-Madrid's Javier Sauras
SLU-Madrid professor Javier Sauras gave the keynote address at an international seminar hosted by Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea, on Aug. 22, examining the evolution of networks in isolated societies, with a focus on internet access in Cuba and North Korea.
The event, titled "Isolation and Communication: The Evolution of Networks — Examining the Internet in Cuba and North Korea," took place from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Sogang University's Matteo Hall.
Javier Sauras, Ph.D., communication professor at Saint Louis University-Madrid, delivered the keynote address. Sauras was invited by Sogang University because his doctoral research focused on communication systems in restricted societies, a field directly related to the seminar's theme.
Sauras' research looks at what Fidel Castro's Cuban Communist Party, the only survivor of the collapse of the Socialist bloc in the Western hemisphere, said about the technologies that drove forward the 1990s information and communication revolution, through its official voice, the newspaper Granma.
"In the early 1990s and for the best part of the next 25 years the Internet was seen as a democratizing force, a vehicle of liberalism that would bring the values of the Western world everywhere, ending any other political alternatives and rendering a new era of capitalism," said Sauras. "Politicians, tycoons, public intellectuals, technology gurus, and all kinds of people kept pounding on the idea that the new information and communication technologies were going to spread participatory democracy to every corner of the world."
"But did that ever happen? Are we better, as a society, today than we were in the 1990s? Is the world better informed, more open, more democratic? For me, it would be very hard to argue that," he added.
Additional presentations were given by Sauras and Soomin Seo, professor at Sogang University. The seminar was moderated by Kim Sung Kyung, professor at the University of North Korean Studies.
A panel discussion followed, featuring Jo Seong Eun, professor at Sogang University, and Kim Tae Ho, professor at Chonbuk National University.
The seminar was organized by Sogang University's Department of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of History. The event was conducted in English.