Monica Macias

Meet Monica Macias, a consultant at CSC who draws from both her life stories, and her academic and empirical experience of living in societies around the world, such as North and South Korea, the USA, China, Equatorial Guinea (EG), Spain and the UK, when writing and advising. 

She has participated as a keynote speaker in conferences related to North Korea at institutions such as LSE, SOAS, Seoul University, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic and Yale University. 

Monica likes sharing her personal experiences with others and believes that by mutually exchanging our experiences and knowledge, we can learn from one another while raising awareness and fostering mutual respect. She is confident that this measure of information dissemination can in turn significantly help to narrow social and interstate conflicts. 

Born in EG, Monica was sent to Pyongyang at age of 6 to study, where she graduated as a textile engineer. After many years of living in societies with different cultures and political ideologies, she had decided to put her empirical knowledge into academic context and received her Masters in International Relations and Diplomacy from SOAS, London, UK. In 2013, Monica’s biography “I’m Monica from Pyongyang” was published in Korean in Seoul, South Korea and received excellent critique from local literature. The book describes Monica Macias’ life journey from her childhood, adolescence and a part of her adulthood in Pyongyang, North Korea to the time that she spent in the UK. 

Throughout the book, as a child of the decolonization era, adolescent of the Cold-War period and adult of the Post Cold-War years, she analyzes human interactions and the impact of the media narratives on citizens and politics of the contrasting societies that she lived in. The English version, “UNBELOGING: My Journey from North Korea” will be published in Autumn 2021.