Archived Events – Page 6 – GW Institute for Korean Studies

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3/22/2022 | Korea Policy Forum, The New Yoon Administration and US-ROK Relations

March 11, 2022March 29, 2022Archived Events, Korea Policy ForumLeave a Comment

Korea Policy Forum

The New Yoon Administration and US-ROK Relations: Journalists’ Views

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM EDT

Zoom Event

See the Event Program

The People Power Party candidate, former Prosecutor General Yoon Suk-yeol, was narrowly elected as South Korea’s next president on March 9, 2022. President-elect Yoon will take office on May 10, 2022. In anticipation of the start of a new administration, The GW Institute for Korean Studies has invited four renowned journalists (two each from South Korea and the United States) to discuss the domestic reactions to the results of the Korean presidential election and the expectations and concerns about U.S.-Korea relations under the new Yoon administration.

Due to the change in ruling parties, it’s likely that the new Yoon administration’s approach to foreign policy will differ greatly from that of the incumbent Moon administration. Some have speculated that this new administration could pursue a renewed push for closer relations with the U.S. Others have also suggested that the new administration will take a more hardline stance on North Korea compared to the Moon administration’s more conciliatory approach. Given the narrow margin of victory in the election, domestic reactions to any major policy changes are certain to spark a lively debate among a divided Korean public. We invite you to join us to hear our invited journalists’ unique perspectives on these issues and more as we analyze the impact of Yoon’s election victory.

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

Speakers

Gyuseok Jang is the News Director of the CBS (Christian Broadcasting System) Morning News show, one of the major nation-wide radio broadcasting programs in South Korea. He directs the overall procedures of the show, including curating items, broadcast programing, and producing breaking news and podcasts. He also previously worked as a Washington correspondent for 3 years (2017-2019). While residing in D.C., he delivered news about U.S.-ROK and U.S.-DPRK relations issues via radio, internet, and social media. He has also had the opportunity to research and write about all the ups and downs of U.S.-DPRK relations, from the so called ‘Bloody Nose Strike’ to U.S.-DPRK Summits. He obtained his B.A. in Public Administration from Yonsei University and also received an M.S. in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics.

portrait of Josh Rogin in professional attire

Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post and a political analyst with CNN. He is also the author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century, released in March, 2021 by Houghton Mifflin Harcout. Previously, he has covered foreign policy and national security for Bloomberg View, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week magazine, and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. His work has been featured on outlets including NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, NPR, and many more. He has been recognized with the Interaction Award for Excellence in International Reporting and as a Finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He has also received journalism fellowships from the Knight Foundation, the East-West Center, and the National Press Foundation. He has a B.A. in international affairs from the George Washington University and studied at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Ali Rogin of the PBS News Hour.

Jung Eun Lee is an editorial writer and a reporter at the Dong-A Ilbo Daily in South Korea. She worked as a Washington correspondent from 2019 to 2021. She specializes in national security and foreign affairs, and has been reporting on North Korea, denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy. She was dispatched to Channel A, the affiliate broadcasting company of Dong-A Ilbo, as a senior reporter at the political desk in 2014. She was a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies from 2014 to 2015. She obtained her B.A. in journalism from Seoul National University, and M.A. from the Graduate School of North Korean Studies.

Tim Martin is the Korea bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, where he oversees news coverage on the Korean Peninsula. He has been based in Seoul since early 2017, with prior stints at the Journal’s offices in New York, Chicago and Atlanta—where he covered public health and the CDC. He holds a B.A. in Journalism from Eastern Illinois University and also previously studied Korean at Seoul National University.

Moderator

portrait of Yonho Kim in professional attire

Yonho Kim is an Associate Research Professor of Practice and the 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 Korean Phone Money: Airtime Transfers as a Precursor to Mobile Payment System (2020), 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.

3/31/2022 | Soh Jaipil Lecture Series with Darcie Draudt

March 2, 2022April 8, 2022Archived Events, Soh Jaipil Lecture SeriesLeave a Comment

Making Migrants: Policy Community Dynamics in Immigration and Citizenship in South Korea

Thursday, March 31, 2022
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM EDT

Hybrid Event

Lindner Family Commons (Room 602)

Elliott School of International Affairs,

1957 E Street Northwest

Washington, DC 20052

**THIS IS A HYBRID EVENT. IN-PERSON TICKETS ARE RESERVED FOR GW STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF. For outside affiliations, there will be tickets available to attend virtually via Zoom.**

Event Program (PDF)

About the Event

In the early 2000s demographic decline pushed the South Korean national government to abandon its ethnonational citizenship policies and implement some of the most progressive immigration policies in East Asia. Yet closer scrutiny of the policies reveals differences in the rights, privileges, and duties extended to immigrants according to newly created migrant categories. In this lecture, Draudt draws two cases from her book project and compares the policymaking dynamics that produced two forms of “kinship migration” policies: diaspora return migrants and marriage migrants. Draudt shows how meso-level interactions among state and social actors categorize citizens and non-citizens according to extant membership frames—the laws, ideas, and institutions that historically situate a citizen within the nation. Based on original research from archival research, interviews, and immersive fieldwork in South Korea from 2017 to 2019, the research contributes to broader discussions of how policy community dynamics expand the rights and social benefits for some migrants and citizens while simultaneously excluding or restricting others.

Speaker

portrait of Darcie Draudt in professional attire posing with arms crossed

Darcie Draudt is a Postdoctoral Fellow for the George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) and a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. A political scientist and foreign policy analyst, Dr. Draudt publishes broadly on South and North Korean domestic politics and foreign policy, inter-Korean relations, and US-Korea policy. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. in Korean Studies from the Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies, and a B.A. with Honors in Anthropology from Davidson College. In 2021, Dr. Draudt was named one of the Next Generation Korea Peninsula Specialists at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. She previously was a visiting scholar at the Yonsei University Department of Political Science and a Korea Foundation dissertation fieldwork fellow. She was also a research associate for Korea Studies and the Program on US-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonresident James A. Kelly Korean Studies fellow at Pacific Forum, and a field researcher for the International Organization for Migration Research and Training Center in South Korea.

Moderator

portrait of Celeste Arrington posing with arms crossed in black outfit

Celeste Arrington is Korea Foundation Associate 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: Victim Movements and Governmental Accountability in Japan and South Korea (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.

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2/23/2022 | Premodern Korea Lecture Series with Marjorie Burge

February 9, 2022May 16, 2022Archived Events, Premodern Korea Lecture SeriesLeave a Comment

“Inscribing the Realm: Early Silla Written Culture Through Mokkan”

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM EDT

Zoom Event

Event Program (PDF)

About the Event

The early Korean kingdom of Silla (ca. third century CE-935 CE) began to use Sinographic writing widely in the mid-sixth century. This change appears to coincide with considerable territorial expansion under King Chinhǔng (r. 540-576), which included the annexation of territories formerly part of the Kaya confederacy and the conquest of the Han River Valley. While extant sources for this period are exceedingly few, inscriptions on stone steles and recently discovered mokkan (wooden strips with ink writing) suggest that the integration of new lands into the realm was accomplished at least in part through the use of writing. Mokkan inscriptions confirm the spread of document-based administration to mountain-fortress sites in outlying parts of the realm, while monumental inscriptions on stone steles appear to symbolically inscribe these new parts of the realm as belonging to the Silla king. This presentation will outline what we know of written culture in sixth and seventh century Silla through these inscriptions, and argue that writing was seen as a vital technology for bringing new territories and people under Silla control.

Speaker

Marjorie Burge received a B.A. in Asian Studies and Japanese from George Washington University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures at UC Berkeley. From 2018-2019, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chicago. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “Inscriptive Life and Sinographic Literary Culture in Early Historic Korea and Japan,” examines inscribed wood slips known as mokkan excavated from sites in southern Korea and Japan in order to shed light on the nature of written culture in early historic Paekche (ca. third century-660 CE), Silla (ca. third century-935 CE) and Japan. The dissertation also attempts to answer questions related to the role of allochthons (Korean migrants) at the Japanese court in the development of written culture. Dr. Burge is currently working on revising her dissertation for publication as a book titled Unearthing the Written Cultures of Early Korea and Japan. In addition to this book project, Dr. Burge is currently working on two smaller projects, one on the late-ninth century waka-kanshi collection Shinsen Man’yōshū, and another on the literary culture of the court at the Ōmi capital (667-672).

Moderator

Jack Davey is an archaeologist and Early Koreanist specializing in the Iron Age of peripheral East Asia and the early states of Proto-Three Kingdoms Period Korea. He has been a part-time faculty member at George Washington University since 2019 where teaches courses on the history and archaeology of Early Korea as well as the geopolitical ramifications of historical disputes in East Asia. At GW, he is also the Managing Editor of The Journal of Korean Studies where he seeks to foster interesting, interdisciplinary scholarship that challenges how we understand Korea as an analytic category. Dr. Davey received his Ph.D. in Archaeology from UCLA. He was a Korea Foundation postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley from 2014-2015 and a research fellow at the Academy of Korean Studies in 2018.

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2/9/2022 | North Korea Economic Forum: Delving into Kim Jong-un’s Ten Years

February 1, 2022February 9, 2022Archived Events, North Korea Economic ForumLeave a Comment

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

8:30 AM – 10:30 AM EST | 10:30 PM – 12:30 AM KST

Zoom Event

Event Program (PDF)

event agenda for the NK Economic Forum: Delving into Kim Jong-un’s Ten Years event

Ten years have passed since Kim Jong-un became the leader of North Korea in his late twenties. Despite initial expectations for possible instability in North Korea, Kim appears to be a politically competent leader capable of maintaining his power fairly well. However, he is currently facing serious obstacles to realizing his ambitions of making North Korea into a nuclear power state and developing a prosperous economy. This timely webinar invites renowned South Korean and American experts on North Korea’s economy and politics to investigate the current internal situation and to evaluate political economy dynamics in North Korea.

If you have a question for the speakers, please submit it when you complete the guest registration.

Registered guests will receive confirmation email with details for joining the Zoom event.

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

For information on speakers, please check the event program.

North Korea Economic Forum Background

The North Korea Economic Forum (NKEF) is part of the policy program at the George Washington University’s Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS). The Forum aims to promote the understanding of North Korean economic issues, distribute the well-balanced, deeply touched, and multi-dimensionally explored pictures of North Korean economy and to expand the network among the various North Korean economy watchers. The Forum is mostly a closed and off-the-record meeting where participants can freely and seriously discuss the critical issues. Mr. William Brown is currently the chair of the NKEF and is leading the meetings. It also organizes special conferences made public throughout the academic year. The Forum is made possible by a generous grant provided by the KDI School of Public Policy and Management.

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1/14-1/15/2022 | Graduate Research and Publication Workshop

January 19, 2022January 19, 2022Archived EventsLeave a Comment

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2022 Workshop: January 14-15, 2022

About

The GWIKS Graduate Student Research and Publication Workshop offers a venue for Korean Studies graduate students to present and receive feedback on their ongoing work. This workshop distinguishes itself from others in that it focuses on not only providing advice to students on their research but also mentoring them through the academic publishing process. It brings together scholars of different disciplines in the field and editors of prominent journals. Since the job market is becoming more competitive and job candidates are expected to have at least one or two publications, the aim of the workshop is to help graduate students build relationships with their disciplinary peers and also prepare them early for their ongoing academic careers.

01/26/2022 | Premodern Korea Lecture Series with Ross King

January 5, 2022May 16, 2022Archived Events, Premodern Korea Lecture SeriesLeave a Comment

Did Ch’usa Kim Chŏnghŭi 秋史金正喜 (1786-1856) Really Translate Xixiangji 西廂記 into Korean? Literary Fame, Manuscript Culture, and the Story of the Western Wing in Chosŏn Korea

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EST

Zoom Event

Event Program (PDF)

The history of the reception of Xixiangji 西廂記, arguably China’s most popular dramatic work, in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1897) and into the Taehan Empire (1897-1905), Japanese protectorate (1905-1910) and colonial (1910-1945) periods, raises interesting questions about the intersection of literary fame and book culture. Numerous print editions were imported from China from the 17th century onwards, but because of its reputation as a ‘nether book’ 淫書 and unlike, say, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國志演義, Xixiangji was never printed in Chosŏn. Instead, it was avidly consumed in lovingly produced annotated manuscript copies along with glossaries and commentaries.

This presentation examines the claim, first advanced in the 1970s by Professor Yi Kawŏn on the basis of a manuscript vernacular translation of Xixiangji then in his possession, that one of the Korean translations in wide circulation in late Chosŏn was executed by none other than famous late-Chosŏn polymath Kim Chŏnghŭi 金正喜 (1786-1856), whose numerous noms de plume and sobriquets include Wandang 阮堂 and Ch’usa 秋史.

An examination of this claim requires a survey of the history of the reception of the Xixiangji in Korea, as well as a consideration of the history of the image and reputation of Kim Chŏnghŭi, who was not lionized in modern scholarship until the late 1920s and 1930s. The facts adduced here also force us to reconsider the timing of the “Xixiangji boom,” which is usually alleged to have peaked in the last decade of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th century; they also compel us to rethink common modern-day assumptions about the withering of traditional reading practices and manuscript culture after the turn of the 20th century.

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

Speaker

portrait of Joon Hyung Kim in professional attire

Ross King is Professor of Korean at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the cultural and social history of language, writing, and literary culture in Korea and in the Sinographic Cosmopolis more broadly, with a particular interest in comparative histories of vernacularization. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, as Managing Editor of the Brill Korean Studies Library, and as co-editor (with David Lurie and Marion Eggert) of the series “Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis” (also Brill). He is the editor of Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen: Reading Sheldon Pollock from the Sinographic Cosmopolis (forthcoming, Brill) and the author of “I Thank Korea for her Books:” James Scarth Gale, Korean Literature in hanmun, and Allo-metropolitan Missionary Orientalism (forthcoming, University of Toronto Press).

Moderator

portrait of Jisoo Kim in professional attire

Jisoo M. Kim 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.

12/3/2021 | Book Manuscript Workshop with Yewon Lee

December 10, 2021December 10, 2021Archived EventsLeave a Comment

Friday, December 3, 2021

Learn More About the Book Manuscript Workshop

Speaker

Yewon Andrea Lee was an Assistant Research Professor of International Affairs and 2020-21 Postdoctoral Fellow at The George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS). She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Korean Studies at University of Tübingen.

As a political and labor sociologist and urban ethnographer, Yewon is broadly interested in how speculative real estate interests increasingly dictate the shape and character of urban landscapes and urban lives. Currently, Yewon is preparing a monograph that examines a fascinating case in which tenant shopkeepers in South Korea are challenging the formidable power of property-ownership-based citizenship. The activism of tenant shopkeepers in Korea against eviction from their shops is debunking the idea that these so-called micro-entrepreneurs or petit bourgeoisie are either shielded from capitalist exploitation or destined to be unrevolutionary and individualistic. Yewon’s ethnographic work on tenant shopkeepers’ activism both reveals the urban inequalities that are driven by rentier capitalism and analyzes the on-the-ground efforts to counter them.

Her work has been well received, winning many awards, including the American Sociological Association’s 2020 Labor & Labor Movement Section’s Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Graduate Student Paper Award.

Commentators

Marco Garrido posing for photo outdoors with plants in the background

Marco Garrido is an Associate Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. His work has focused on the relationship between the urban poor and middle class in Manila as located in slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. The project has been to connect this relationship with urban structure on the one hand and political dissensus on the other. In the process, Dr. Garrido highlight the role of class in shaping urban space, social life, and politics.

The project has resulted in several articles: on segregation in the form of the interspersion of slums and residential enclaves; on the urban poor’s support for populism; on the relationship between spatial and social boundaries; and on developing an urban sociology focused on cities in the Global South. This work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Qualitative Sociology, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. More recently, Dr. Garrido published a book entitled The Patchwork City.

Dr. Garrido’s new project draws a link between democratic recession and the explosive growth of the middle class in the developing world. Specifically, he locates the Philippine middle class’ support for Rodrigo Duterte in their experience of democracy. His research aims to provide a thick account of this experience and, thereby, clarify the sources of democratic disenchantment in the Philippines and elsewhere.

Yoonkyung Lee is a political sociologist specializing in labour politics, social movements, political representation, and the political economy of neoliberalism with a regional focus on East Asia. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and was associate professor in Sociology and Asian and Asian-American Studies at State University of New York-Binghamton (2006-2016) before joining the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto in 2016. She is also the director of the Center for the Study of Korea (2019-2022).

Yoonkyung Lee is the author of Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan (Stanford University Press, 2011) and Between the Streets and the Assembly: Social Movements, Political Parties, and Democracy in Korea (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming). Her recent publications include “Cold War Undercurrents: The Extreme Right Variants in East Asian Democracies” (Politics and Society, 2021), “Seoul as a Site of Labor Resistance: The Spatial Representation of Inequality and injustice” (European Journal of Korean Studies, 2021), and “Neoliberal Methods of Labor Repression: Privatized Violence and Dispossessive Litigation in Korea” (Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2019).

Youjeong Oh is Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. in geography from University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Oh is the author of Pop City: Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place (Cornell, 2018). Her research explores urbanism, development and dispossession, social movement, and media, tourism, and place in East Asia. Dr. Oh’s current research is about (over)development, dispossession, and desires in Jeju, South Korea.

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12/14/2021 | Korea Policy Forum: South Korea’s Presidential Election & US-ROK Relations (Session 2)

December 6, 2021January 3, 2022Archived Events, Korea Policy ForumLeave a Comment

Korea Policy Forum

South Korea’s Presidential Election & US-ROK Relations

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EST

11:00 PM – 12:00 AM KST

Zoom Event

RSVP

Event Program (PDF)

South Koreans will soon go to the polls to elect their next president on March 9, 2022. The two leading candidates are former Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung from the ruling Democratic Party and former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl from the opposition People Power Party. As these two candidates hold divergent views on foreign policy, the results of this consequential election will surely have a major impact on US-ROK relations.

The GW Institute for Korean Studies has invited a prominent supporter of each major candidate to share their views on the race and their preferred candidate’s foreign policy goals. Joon Hyung Kim (former Chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy) and Beomchul Shin (Director of Diplomacy and Security Center at Korea Research Institute for National Strategy) will be presenting on the foreign policy of Lee Jae-myung and Yoon Seok-youl, respectively. Their presentations will be followed by comments from two expert discussants, Celeste Arrington (Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at GW) and Mark Tokola (Vice President of the Korea Economic Institute of America). We invite you to join us for an engaging discussion on the upcoming election and its implications for the future of US-ROK relations.

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

Speaker

Joon Hyung Kim is the former Chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy and currently a Professor of the International Studies Department, Handong Global University. His areas of specialization and interests are theories of international relations, Northeast Asian relations including US-China, US-ROK, and North-South Korean relations. He was also invited as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar to George Mason University’s Department of Public and International Affairs, and taught several courses including US-Korea Relations and East Asian International Politics. Since 2011, Dr. Kim has been involved in the Korea Peace Forum, a renowned network-based think-tank specialized in peace and unification. In 2016 and 2017, he was a member of Moon Jae In’s presidential election camp, where he advised on and formulated major foreign policies. After Moon was elected, he joined the Government Transition Committee, and became a member of the Presidential Commission on Policy Planning (Security and Foreign Policy Sub-committee). In addition to that, he belonged to advisory committees to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Unification, and the National Security Council. Dr. Kim earned his Bachelor’s Degree at Yonsei University (1986), and M.A. and Ph.D. at George Washington University.

Discussants

Alexis Dudden speaking into a mic at a professional event

Alexis Dudden is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches modern Japanese, Korean, and international history. She publishes regularly in print and online media and is completing a book project tentatively called, The Opening and Closing of Japan, 1850-2020. Dudden received her BA from Columbia University in 1991 and her PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1998. Since1985, she has lived and studied for extended periods of time in Japan and South Korea and is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

portrait of Mark Tokola in professional attire

Mark Tokola is Vice President of the Korea Economic Institute of America in Washington, DC. He retired as a U.S. Senior Foreign Service Officer with the rank of Minister-Counselor in September 2014. His last posting was as the Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at US Embassy in London. Previously he had served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassies in Seoul, Republic of Korea; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and, Reykjavik, Iceland. Among his other postings were two tours at the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at Embassy London, and Economic Counselor at the US Embassy in The Hague. He also served as Director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office (ITAO) in Baghdad from 2007-2008. Mr. Tokola received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award for his work on implementing the Dayton Peace Accords while serving as Political Counselor in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1997-1999. He holds a BA in International Relations from Pomona College in Claremont, California, and an LL.M. in European Community Law from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Mr. Tokola serves on the Board of Governors of DACOR: An Organization of Foreign Affairs Professionals, and on the Board of Trustees of the Bacon House Foundation.

Moderator

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12/7/2021 | Suspicious Deaths: Forensic Medicine, Dead Bodies, and Criminal Justice in 18th-Century Korea

December 2, 2021December 7, 2021Archived EventsLeave a Comment

Sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center and convened by Professor Victor Seow, Department of the History of Science; Co-sponsored by the Korea Institute, Harvard University

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM EST

Zoom Event

This presentation explores the theme of criminal justice in Chosön Korea (1392-1910) by investigating forensic medicine and the postmortem examination of dead bodies. It focuses on homicide cases to probe into the cultural meaning of interpersonal violence. Many homicide cases we find in legal archives continue to reflect in our present-day society, These cases provide a window for us to understand how criminal justice was socially and culturally shaped and altered over time. The practice of forensic medicine played a significant role in search of “truth” and capacitated legal authorities to visualize violent behavior committed against the victims. By using dead bodies as a site, this study addresses the following questions: how did the dead speak grievance through their bodies when forensic medicine was applied in search of truth; what knowledge of medicine was applied when seeking the cause of death; how were “law” and “medicine” complexly intertwined to shape and mold legal reasoning and argument; what forensic texts were circulated in East Asia and how did forensic practice evolve in the Chosön; how did inquest officials reconstruct crime scenes and visualize violence when performing an autopsy; and how did inquest officials treat different forms of legal and medical knowledge in the practice of post-mortem examination. By analyzing a wide array of sources, including forensic texts, inquest reports, criminal records, legal codes, royal edicts, and veritable records, this study demonstrates the development of forensic medicine and how forensic practice was associated with Neo-Confucian concepts such as benevolent rule, leniency, and judicial prudence (humhyul 欽恤).

Speaker

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12/8/2021 | Foreign Policy During the Joseon Dynasty: Special Lecture with Myung-Gi Han

November 22, 2021December 10, 2021Archived EventsLeave a Comment

The Light and Shadow of Foreign Policy Taken by Joseon During the Period of Ming and Qing Dynastic Change

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EST

Hybrid Event

Elliott School of International Affairs

Lindner Family Commons (Room 602)

Virtual via Zoom

**THIS IS A HYBRID EVENT. There will be FORTY (40) first come, first serve in-person tickets for attendance at the George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs. IN-PERSON TICKETS ARE RESERVED FOR GW STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF. For outside affiliations, there will be tickets available to attend virtually via Zoom.**

**Headsets for simultaneous interpretation from Korean to English will be provided during both the presentation and the Q&A session.**

Event Program (PDF)

The geopolitical reality of the Korean Peninsula is grim. It is sandwiched between China and Japan. After the fall of Goguryeo, once a regional power in East Asia, successive dynasties on the Korean Peninsula faced internal upheaval or crises whenever external powers were exchanged or replaced. This is because they were forced to ‘stand in line’ and ‘choose’ between the existing hegemony (覇權國) and the emerging challenging country. And in the process, the Korean Peninsula was often embroiled in war and pushed into the worst possible crisis. In fact, the Imjin War of the Joseon dynasty (1592-1598), the Byeongja War (1636), the Sino-Japanese War (1894), and the Russo-Japanese War (1904) all took place on the same background.

The Byeongja War (1636) is a representative case among them. Joseon, which had maintained its security by complying with the commanding system of the Ming since its founding in 1392, faced a crisis in the early 17th century when the Manchus, who had grown in power, challenged the Ming dynasty. For about 30 years in the early 17th century, when the Ming-Qing change was in progress, Joseon struggled to avoid getting caught up in a war between the two countries. However, it was eventually invaded by the Qing dynasty and suffered the tragedy of surrendering in 47 days.

Why did this happen? Basically, the outbreak of the Byeongja War was closely related to the influence left by the 1592 Imjin War. By examining the political and ideological orientations of the political elites of Joseon from the Imjin War of 1592 to the Byeongja War of 1636, the speaker attempts to reflect on the historical significance of the foreign policy taken by Joseon during the Ming-Qing change.

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

Speakers

Myung-Gi Han is a Professor of Korean History at Myongji University. He has a Ph.D. in History (1998) from the Seoul National University. His research and teaching focuses on Korea-China Relations of the Joseon dynasty, and international relations of East Asia. He was a research fellow at Kyujanggak of Seoul National University and co-editor of the magazine Critical Review of History. He was also co-chair of the Committee of Korea-Japan History Studies. His many publications include Imjin War and Korea-China Relations, King Gwanghae, The First and the Second Manchu Invasion of Korea and East Asia, The Historical Review of Qing’s Invasion of Joseon in 1636, and The Critical Biography of Choi Myeonggil (1586-1647). Additionally, he has won the Wolbong Author Award (2000) and the Korean Publication Culture Award (2014).

Discussant

portrait of Ji-Young Lee with grey background

Ji-Young Lee is an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University’s School of International Service, where she holds the C.W.Lim and Korea Foundation Professorship of Korean Studies. Trained as a political scientist, she has written on Asian historical international relations, regional security order and the U.S. alliance network in East Asia, and South Korean foreign policy. She is the author of China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (Columbia University Press, 2016). Her current book project, The Great Power Next Door (under contract with Columbia University Press), is a historically informed analysis of when and how China has chosen to militarily intervene in the Korean Peninsula. She previously taught at Oberlin College as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Politics and East Asian Studies. Outside academia, she served as the Korea Policy Chair and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and was a non-resident James Kelly Korean Studies Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS.