Book Talk Series on Chosŏn Korea

Speaker
Adam Bohnet, King’s University College at Western

Moderator
Jisoo M. Kim, GW Institute for Korean Studies

Tuesday, May 4, 2021
3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Virtual Event via Zoom

This event is on the record and open to the public.

Win a book giveaway! We will send one hard copy of the book to one of the guests who submit their questions during the event!

Event Description

Beginning with the Imjin War and continuing through the wars of the Ming-Qing transition in Liaodong, a significant number of Chinese settled in Chosŏn along with Japanese defectors and Jurchen refugees. While it has been common to assume that they would gain advantages from their Chinese origins, in fact their treatment varied a great deal, and Chinese migrants were often viewed with suspicion, and they were administered by the state under the same categories used for Jurchen and Japanese migrants. By exploring a number of examples of Chinese migrants to Chosŏn, this presentation will suggest the need to rethink the assumed Sinocentrism of the Chosŏn state.

Speaker

Adam Bohnet (left) is an Associate Professor in History at King’s University College at Western. He received his MA from Kangwon National University in 2001 and his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2008. He worked at the Research Institute for Korean Studies at Korea University in Seoul before coming to King’s in 2012. His book, Turning toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea, came out with Hawaii University Press in December, 2020.

Moderator

Jisoo M. Kim (right) is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures. She currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Korean Studies and the Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center at GW. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Korean Studies. She is a specialist in gender, law, and emotions in Korean history. Her broader research interests include gender and sexuality, crime and justice, forensic medicine, literary representations of the law, history of emotions, vernacular, and gender writing. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation by JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled Sexual Desire, Crime, and Gendered Subjects: A History of Adultery Law in Korea. She received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University.