Department of History

This article examines how North Korean migrants become subjects of their own narratives in South Korean society, with a focus on gender and class divisions as represented on television programs such as Now on My Way to Meet You (Ije mannarŏ gamnida, 2011–present), Moranbong Club (Moranbong k’ŭlŏp, 2015–present), and Unification of Love: Southern Men, Northern Women (Nam-nam-buk-nyŏ, 2014–2017). These shows aim to depict perfectly assimilated migrants who embody the South Korean government’s image of an ideal citizen and thereby introduce an impression of “North Korean-ness” in the absence of input from the North Korea, a closed country. North Korean migrants “become” North Koreans within the programs’ formats, with mixed results. On the one hand, a “double-paned window” perspective, which relies on the North Korean panelists’ testimonies, complicates the programs’ intended narrative of exemplary migrants. On the other hand, North Korean panelists actively fortify the binary gender frame of South Korean society. For example, North Korean male panelists become antagonists when their rough and unsophisticated characteristics appear to confirm South Korean men’s superiority. These South Korean television programs focus on the polar concept of “Southern men and Northern women,” thereby marginalizing North Korean male migrants and South Korean females. Such a stratified gender structure supports South Korean males’ authority and strengthens the heteronormative structure of South Korean society. Keywords: North Korean migrants, South Korean television, Now on My Way to Meet You, Moranbong Club, Southern Men Northern Women, gender, class, South Korean conservatism

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2026.100675.].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2026.100675.].

This article investigates why statistical reasoning has had little impact on the practice of friction ridge (or 'fingerprint') examination, despite both interest and some modest scientific progress toward this goal. Previous research has attributed this lack of results to practitioner resistance and legal apathy. This article seeks to complement those explanations through interviews with experts with a variety of perspectives on contemporary fingerprint practice about practical and mundane obstacles to the belated statistical revolution in fingerprinting. Based on these interviews, we argue that a 'forensic device' is required to incorporate statistical reasoning into fingerprint practice. This device would consist of a robust statistical model fronted by accessible, usable software. These components, in turn, require other components, such as large research data sets, markets, early adopters, government clients, education, and training. We conclude that the statistical revolution has been delayed not just by grand debates over the probabilistic nature of fingerprint evidence, but also by the seemingly mundane problems posed by developing and maintaining the kind of forensic device that would make such a revolution possible and practical.

Abstract The War of Jenkins’ Ear (from 1739 to 1748), more accurately known in Spanish as the “Guerra del Asiento,” marked the end of the Spanish Crown’s authorization of the British monopoly of the South Sea Company to deliver captive Africans to the Spanish Americas. The end of the British Asiento led to four decades of experimentation by various actors within the Spanish Empire trying to reestablish and expand the slave trade, which many Spanish political economy leaders increasingly saw as vital to the future of both the metropolis and the colonies. This article examines certain currents, undercurrents, and countercurrents of the deregulation of the slave trade, linking these debates to the evolving policies on colonial commerce within the Spanish Empire, as authorities in Iberia and the Americas recognized the interconnectedness of these issues and their relationship to the actual slave trading in the colonies. Besides focusing on colonial elites and reforms in colonial governance, this article demonstrates that the timelines of reforms in overall trade policy and measures regarding the slave trade were closely connected.

Abstract: The expansion of schooling in the early 20th Century required the modernization of state governments at the subnational level and related fiscal policy reform. Organized educators in California and Washington promoted legislation in 1920 that would increase each state’s support for schooling. In spite of similar fiscal policy goals and a shared commitment to the support of public schooling in both states, the legislation passed in California and failed in Washington. This comparative analysis of fiscal policy reform in the two states demonstrates the relationship between education fiscal policy and state formation, between tax policy and social change, the role of states as subnational sites for fiscal policy experimentation in the early twentieth century, and the role of policy feedback in fiscal policy reform. A close study of factors contributing to the divergent legislative outcomes illuminates underlying relationships between fiscal policy and associative action at state levels over the 70-year-period preceding the 1920 reform campaigns and demonstrates the centrality of education to research in fiscal sociology and political development.