On September 19, 2019, GWIKS held a lecture series with Professor Eunjung Kim, Associate Professor at Syracuse University, on “Curative Violence: How to Inhabit the Time Machine with Disability.” Moderated by Professor Jisoo M. Kim, Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at GW, Professor Eunjung Kim started her lecture with introducing Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean scientist who claimed that he had achieved the first cloning of patient-specific embryonic stem cells. After Hwang’s publication, South Korean media featured Kang Won Rae, a South Korean singer who was disabled with a spinal-cord injury, of which one newspaper features with the headline “No More Wheelchair for Kang Won Rae;” this showed the emotional desire for cure. Then, she went on explaining “curative violence” which refers to the exercise of affective and physical force intending to erase problematized bodily differences for the putative betterment of the Other. She provided several examples including Sim Ch’ŏng, where Sim Ch’ŏng sacrificed herself to cure her blind father. She demonstrates that this story reflects an ideological apparatus that reinforces gender hierarchy where daughters should sacrifice to empower patriarchs and the nation. Professor Eunjung Kim also made a connection between political ideology and cure that “curability and the hope for reintegration into society successfully depoliticize the colonial and postcolonial management of the disease and violence done in the name of cure.” She wrapped up her lecture with her current research project where she looks at coexistence of the struggle against the foreclosure of disabled people’s lives caused by the impairment rating system to reduce disability benefits and the struggle against occupational illness, debilitation, and deaths caused by the manufacturing process of electronics. She takes cases of Samsung and Wonjin Rayon and sees how these cases are connected to the disability rights movements.
Read introduction to her book “Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea“
