Jung Eun Kwon

jungeun.kwon@gwu.edu

Jung Eun Kwon is a cultural and medical anthropologist whose research explores the intersections of mental health, policy, and gender in South Korea. Her current book project, Reclaiming Suicidality and Care: Young Women, Suicide, and State Intervention in South Korea, examines how young Korean women experience and conceptualize suicidality—encompassing suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts—and how they reimagine care in response to state-led prevention initiatives. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (2021–2022), including interviews with women in their twenties and thirties and participant observation at suicide prevention centers and NGOs, she argues that suicidality develops through long-term, cumulative, and relational processes, as repeated encounters with patriarchy and normative life pressures erode women’s sense of dignity. This contrasts with state prevention programs, which reduce suicidality to individual crises and privilege psychiatric interventions while neglecting structural and gendered conditions. Jung Eun demonstrates how young women develop innovative care practices that challenge dominant paradigms and position them as agents of structural change. She received her PhD in Anthropology (with an Asian Studies Certificate) from the University of Pittsburgh and holds an MA in Anthropology and a BM in Korean Music from Seoul National University. Her work has been supported by Fulbright-IIE and other grants. She is currently developing journal publications and her book manuscript, and has served as Book Review Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies and as a Young Fellow at the People’s Health Institute in South Korea.