Book Talk Series on Chosŏn Korea
Speaker
Hwisang Cho, Emory University
Moderator
Jisoo M. Kim, GW Institute for Korean Studies
Thursday, April 8, 2021
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Virtual Event via Zoom
This event will not be recorded.
Win a book giveaway! We will send one copy of the book to one of the guests who submit their questions during the event!
Event Description
While discussing his book The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea (University Washington Press, 2020), Hwisang Cho will give a survey of the “epistolary revolution” that shaped Korean society from the sixteenth century to the end of the Chosŏn dynasty and beyond. By examining the physical peculiarities of new letter forms, the cooptation of letters for other purposes after their communicative functions, and the rise of diverse political epistolary genres, this talk will illuminate how innovation in epistolary practices allowed diverse writers to move beyond the limits imposed by the existing scholarly culture, gender norms, and political systems. While emphasizing how the epistolary revolution posed new challenges to traditional values and already-established institutions, it will demonstrate that new modes of reading and writing developed in the seemingly mundane and trivial practice of letter writing triggered a flourishing of Neo-Confucian moral thought, the formation of new kinds of cultural power, and the rise of elite public politics.
Speaker
Hwisang Cho (left) is an assistant professor in Korean studies at Emory University. He received his Ph.D. in premodern Korean history from Columbia. Cho’s areas of specialization include the cultural, intellectual, and literary history of Korea, comparative textual media, and global written culture.
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.
Stephen Costello has been immersed in South Korean politics and foreign policy since 1990. He is the Director of the policy NGO AsiaEast.Org and columnist with The Korea Times in Seoul. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy Analysis from Syracuse University. Mr. Costello was formerly director of the Korea Program at the Atlantic Council of the US and director of the Kim Dae Jung Peace Foundation/USA. He was a political consultant and policy advisor to overseas political parties and mayors, and Washington manager for overseas NGOs. He has consulted for small technology businesses in Korea and the US. He has advised ministers and staff at the Foreign and Unification ministries in Seoul and the State Department in Washington. Beyond South Korea, Costello’s focus includes the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia, and the US interests in the region.
Celeste Arrington is Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at GW. She specializes in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. Her research and teaching focus on law and social movements, the media, lawyers, policy processes, historical justice, North Korean human rights, and qualitative methods. She is also interested in the international relations and security of Northeast Asia and transnational activism. She is the author of Accidental Activists: Victims and Government Accountability in South Korea and Japan (2016) and has published in Comparative Political Studies, Law & Society Review, Journal of East Asian Studies, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, and the Washington Post, among others. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. from Princeton University. She is currently writing a book that analyzes the role of lawyers and legal activism in Japanese and Korean policies related to persons with disabilities and tobacco control.
Heung-Kyu Kim is the founder and Director of China Policy Institute and professor in the department of political science at Ajou University, South Korea. He also served as a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His current assignments include Policy Advisory Board Member for the Ministry of National Defense and the ROK Army and a member of the Foreign Ministry’s Reform Commission. He also served as Director of Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Presidential Commission on Policy Planning, Team Leader of Security and Defense in the Presidential Task Force of Future Vision 2045, a board member of the National Security Council and a board member of National Defense Reform Commission. Dr. Kim’s publications include China and the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Promoting a Trilateral Dialogue (CFR, 2017), Enemy, Homager or Equal Partner?: Evolving Korea-China Relations (2012), From a Buffer Zone to a Strategic Burden: Evolving Sino-North Korea Relations during Hu Jintao Era (2010). His book China’s Central-Local Relations and Decision-Making received an award for Excellency of the Year by the Ministry of Culture in 2008. He also received the NEAR Foundation Academic prize of the year in the area of foreign policy and security in 2014. Kim received his BA and MA in international relations from Seoul National University, South Korea, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan.
Yonho Kim is Associate Research Professor of Practice and Associate Director of GW Institute for Korean Studies. He specializes in North Korea’s mobile telecommunications and U.S. policy towards North Korea. Kim is the author of North Korea’s Mobile Telecommunications and Private Transportation Services in the Kim Jong-un Era (2019) and Cell Phones in North Korea: Has North Korea Entered the Telecommunications Revolution? (2014). His research findings were covered by various media outlets, including Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Yonhap News, and Libération. Prior to joining GWIKS, he extensively interacted with the Washington policy circle on the Korean peninsula as Senior Researcher of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Senior Reporter for Voice of America’s Korean Service, and Assistant Director of the Atlantic Council’s Program on Korea in Transition. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in International Relations from Seoul National University, and an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Chang Huh has been serving as the Deputy Minister for International Affairs of the Ministry of Economy and Finance since February 2020. He has worked in various capacities both at home and abroad, including serving as the Director General for the Development Finance Bureau from 2018 to 2020 and as the Senior Director for the International Economic Policy Division from 2012 to 2013. Dr. Huh has also worked at the OECD as the Minister of the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Korea (2015-2018) and at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as an advisor to the Executive Director of the Korean Office (2004-2005). He majored in International Economics at Seoul National University and received a Ph.D. in Economics from I.E.P. de Paris in July 2003.
Hee-Kwon Jung has been serving as the Director-General for the International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Science and ICT since November 2019. He also served as the President of the Seoul Office of Central Radio Management Service of the Ministry of Science and ICT from 2018 to 2019. From 2014 to 2016, he worked as the Director of the Public-Private Joint Task Force for the Creative Economy on the Presidential Advisory Council for Science and Technology and held positions in the S&T Innovation Division, S&T Strategy Division, and S&T Policy Division of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning. From 2009 to 2011, he was seconded to the OECD. In 2007, he worked as the Director of the Technology Innovation System Division of the Ministry of Science and Technology. He graduated from Seoul National University, majoring in International Economics, and acquired an M.A in Public Administration from the University of Missouri.
Moran Ki is a professor in the Department of Cancer Control and Population Health at the National Cancer Center Graduate School of Cancer Science and Policy (NCC-GCSP). Her expertise lies in infectious disease epidemiology and global health. She worked as a professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Eulji University from 1998 to 2013 and served as the Dean of Eulji University’s Graduate School of Public Health from 2005 to 2008 and again from 2011 to 2013. She received her Ph.D. from Hanyang University’s College of Medicine. She also received an M.P.H. in Public Health from Seoul National University and an M.D. in medicine from Hanyang University.
Geoffrey Cain, ESIA BA ’08, is a foreign correspondent and author who has covered Asia and technology for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The New Republic, and other publications. A resident of South Korea for five years and a Fulbright scholar, he studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the George Washington University. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Monica Kim is Assistant Professor in U.S. and the World History in the Department of History at New York University. Her book, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History (Princeton University Press), is a trans-Pacific history of decolonization told through the experiences of two generations of people creating and navigating military interrogation rooms of the Korean War. She has published work in journals such as Critical Asian Studies and positions: Asia critique concerning U.S. Empire, war-making, and decolonization. She is also a member of the Editorial Collective for Radical History Review. Her research and writing have been supported by fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Penn Humanities Forum at University of Pennsylvania, and the Korea Foundation.
Gregg A. Brazinsky is Professor of History and International Affairs and Deputy Director of GW Institute for Korean Studies. His research seeks to understand the diverse and multi-faceted interactions among East Asian states and between Asia and the United States. He is the author of Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy (University of North Carolina Press, 2007) and Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). He served as Interim Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies during the Spring 2017 semester.
