03/27/24 | Premodern Korea Lecture Series with Wenjiao Cai

“The Commodification of Chosŏn Ginseng and the Scale

of Environmental Change in Early Modern East Asia”

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

10:00 A.M – 11:30 A.M. EST

Virtual Event via Zoom

About the Event

This talk explores the ecological impacts of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trade of Chosŏn ginseng in East Asia. Focusing on the transformation of Kanggye—Chosŏn’s largest producer of export ginseng—it shows how cross-border commodity flows reorganized local natural and social landscapes through the systematic extraction of the root and how the resulting exhaustion of ginseng reserves prompted countermeasures ranging from regulating sales, adjusting tribute collection, and eventually, promoting cultivated varieties. By demonstrating how foreign demand for ginseng altered the environment on the Korean peninsula, the analysis illuminates the forces of ecological change that transcended national and imperial boundaries. Moreover, by elucidating the diverse practices the Chosŏn state developed to extract and conserve ginseng, it enriches scholarly understandings of natural resource management in this period, which has been predominantly studied through the institution of state forestry.

Speaker

headshot of Marjorie Burge with greenery in the background

Wenjiao Cai is a historian of early modern Korea with research interests in environments, science and technology, law, and frontiers and borderlands. She is working on her first manuscript, Coping with the Cold: Nature and State on Chosŏn Korea’s Northern Frontier, which examines how human-climate relations shaped state expansion in Chosŏn’s northern provinces of P’yŏngan and Hamgyŏng. Wenjiao received her Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 2022 and currently serves as a Moon Family Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

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 at George Washington University. She is Founding Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies (2017-Present) and Founding Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center (2018-Present). She also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Korean Studies. She specializes in gender, sexuality, law, emotions, and affect in Korean history. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2016), 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 Criminalizing Intimacy: Marriage, Concubinage, and Illicit Sex in Chosŏn Korea. She received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University.

03/22/2024 | GWIKS Special Talk, “Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change in South Korea”

GWIKS Book Talk

Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change in South Korea

Friday, March 22, 2024

12:30 PM – 02:00 PM EST

Hybrid Event

1957 E ST Northwest, Washington DC

Lindner Family Commons, Room 602

Virtual via Zoom

Event Description 

In Dr. Yong-Chool Ha’s latest book, he examines a paradox in Korea’s economic development: an ultra-modern industrial economy has been achieved, yet traditional networks of obligation and solidarity, such as blood, school, and regional ties have persisted, and even become more deeply reinforced, profoundly affecting the fundamental aspects of Korean politics and socio-economic relations. Ha contends that this paradox is not accidental, and that the course of Korea’s late economic development shaped and entrenched these “primordial” ties into Korea’s politics, society, and economy. Thus, the persistence and predominance of these ties, what he calls “neofamilism,” requires an explanation as to when, why, and how it arose. “Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change in South Korea” is about the social consequences of late industrialization. While much has been written about the economic success stories of late industrialization, the analysis of changes in social relations engendered by late industrialization has been strikingly absent. The GW Institute for Korean Studies and East Asia National Resource Center invite you to join us for this special book talk lecture from Yong-Chool Ha as he narrows the gap between political economy and sociology in the study of late industrialization. 

 

Speaker

portrait of Gregg Brazinsky in professional attire

YONG-CHOOL HA is Director of the Center for Korea Studies and Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Social Science at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His primary academic interests are comparative politics and society with a particular focus on late coming nations (Korea, Japan, Prussia, China and the Soviet Union), Soviet and Russian politics, the Russian Far East, Korean domestic and international politics, inter-Korean Relations and East Asian regional politics and international theories in East Asia. He has edited or co-authored many books in Korean and English, including New Perspectives on International Studies in Korea, Russia’s Choice at the Crossroads, and Global Standards and Identity in Korean Society. He has also published countless articles for academic journals and conferences. His latest book, Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change in South Korea, was released by UW Press in February 2024. He holds a B.A. from Seoul National University, an M.A. from Kent State University, and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley.

Moderator

headshot of Seonjou Kang

CELESTE ARRINGTON is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at GW. She specializes in comparative public policy, law and social change, lawyers, and governance, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. She is also interested in Northeast Asian security, North Korean human rights, and transnational activism. Her first book was Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Governmental Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell, 2016). She has published numerous articles and, with Patricia Goedde, she co-edited Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge, 2021). Her current book project analyzes the legalistic turn in Korean and Japanese governance through paired case studies related to tobacco control and disability rights. She received a PhD from UC Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Princeton University. She is a core faculty of the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) and president of the Association of Korean Political Studies. Her recent article“Knowledge production through legal mobilization: Environmental activism against the U.S. military bases in East Asia” with Claudia Kim won the Asian Law and Society Association’s distinguished article award.