April 27, 2017
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Index
4/27 | Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Korea - Various
4/13 | Cinema Beyond Melodrama: Lee Chang-dong and Divine Justice - Steven Choe
3/23 | Korea-U.S. Relations in the Post Geun-hye, Post Obama Era - Edward K.H. Dong
3/7 | Making We the People: Democratic Constitutional Founding in Postwar Japan and Korea - Chaihark Hahm
2/23 | The Trump Administration’s Northeast Asia Policy - Various
2/16 | A Conversation with Writer Kyung-uk Kim - Kyung-uk Kim, Bruce Fulton
2/2 | Film Screening: People are the Sky - Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
Thursday, April 27 (10:00 a.m.)
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Korea
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Summary: Early Korea is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand human society on the Korean peninsula in ancient times, make the case for the relevance of the region to world history and archaeology, and critically appraise how ancient history is used in the present to foster notions of Korean identity. It has great potential as a case study for approaching broader topics in archaeology and history like state formation, cultural contact, technological development, social and political stratification, and urbanization. It draws together a number of traditional disciplines such as history, archaeology, art history, and linguistics and demands engagement with diverse methodologies and evidence. There are two factors that have been limiting the field so far. First, interpretation is constrained by adherence to a small number of problematic textual sources, and engagement with non-historical, non-archaeological methodologies has been limited. Second, the archaeological environment in South Korea encourages extreme regional specialization, and expertise and integrative studies that look more broadly are not prevalent. Compounding this, contemporary geo-nationalism and lack of critical appraisal of the concept of ‘Korea’ as a subjective analytical category has prevented peninsular data from being placed effectively into its East Asian and world archaeology context. This conference addresses these problems by showcasing interesting, innovative approaches to society on the Korean peninsula in ancient times that transcend and break down these limiting categories and mindsets. Younger scholars working on peninsular material from a historical, archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, paleo-environmental, or other framework will have an opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from peers and senior scholars. The conference is also designed to bring scholars not working on Korean material into the discussion as well as draw attention to recent political developments in Korea that have had a significant impact on the academic freedom and future sustainability of the field.
Thursday, April 13 (4:00 p.m.)
Cinema Beyond Melodrama: Lee Chang-dong and Divine Justice
Steven Choe (San Francisco State University)
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Summary: According to scholars, no other genre or mode of film making has dominated Korean film production more than the melodrama. It is key for understanding the appeal of the films produced by Korea’s culture industry and the popularity of K-pop culture throughout Asia and the world. This presentation discusses two films by Lee Chang-dong, Secret Sunshine (2007) and Poetry (2010), to show how they attempt to think the concept of justice beyond the ethical and metaphysical principles proposed by the melodramatic mode in narrative cinema. By taking this cinema to the limit, these films propose new ways of critically representing and reconciling with loss, the other, and the politics of blame.
Thursday, March 23 (12:00 p.m.)
Enmity, Amity, Comity, Normality, Abnormality: Korea-U.S. Relations in the Post Geun-hye, Post Obama Era
Edward K.H. Dong (Minister-Counselor of Political Affairs, US Embassy Seoul)
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Summary: Korea-U.S. relations have historically been fraught, with Korea more often than not part of a sub-issue in broader contexts such as the Cold War in Asia, U.S.-China and U.S.-Japan relations, and global non-proliferation. Even on a bilateral basis, the relationship is often defined by North Korea/military alliance and economic/commercial factors, leading to frictions. In more recent years, the relationship has broadened and diversified stemming in particular from a U.S. appreciation of the consequences of tremendous changes in the Republic of Korea, but the uncertainties stemming from new leadership in Seoul and Washington will have implications for whether the “abnormality” of fraught ties becomes “normality” again.
Bio: Edward Dong retired from the State Department after a thirty seven year career with the Senior Foreign Service rank of Minister-Counselor. Dong is an expert in East Asian affairs, fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language and well versed in security and economic policy. He spent three tours at Embassy Seoul, and was also the Director of Korean Affairs during Secretary Albright’s visit to Pyongyang in October 2000.
Tuesday, March 7 (4:00 p.m.)
Making We the People: Democratic Constitutional Founding in Postwar Japan and Korea
Chaihark Hahm (Yonsei University)
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Summary: According to the preamble of the Korean constitution, it is ‘We the People of Korea’ that is drafting and promulgating the constitution as an expression of their sovereign will. But, who are these sovereign people, and how does one identify them? Are they the same as the ethnic Korean nation? Further, when the constitution is drafted under overbearing foreign influence, as was the case in postcolonial Korea, can we really say that the people are sovereign? And if the new constitution fails to categorically reject the evils of the past, as is often claimed to be the case in Korea, is the legitimacy of constitutional founding somehow compromised? Through a reflection on Korea’s constitutional founding, Prof. Hahm will suggest a new approach to thinking about the relationship between popular sovereignty and constitution making.
Bio: Chaihark Hahm is Professor of Law at Yonsei University School of Law in Seoul, Korea. He teaches and writes on constitutional theory, comparative constitutional law, Confucian political theory, Korean legal culture and history, citizenship education, and human rights. Dr. Hahm received his legal training in both Korea and the United States: Seoul National University (LL.B. 1986), Yale (LL.M. 1987), Columbia (J.D. 1994), and Harvard (S.J.D. 2000). He also studied theology at Yale Divinity School (M.A.R. 1989).
Thursday, February 23 (2:00 p.m.)
The Trump Administration’s Northeast Asia Policy
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Co-Sponsor/s: Northeast Asian History Foundation, Institute of East Asian Studies
Summary: This conference addresses the challenges of contemporary North-east Asian security, focusing on the implications of the Trump ad-ministration’s policies for the region. Analyzing dynamics between U.S.-China relations and America’s two alliances (with Japan and South Korea), participants will discuss the extent to which the future security order in Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula will be different from or similar to those of the post-Cold War period. In a 1.5 track dialogue, high-profile figures from the United States and South Korea will participate as presenters or discussants. In this pub-lic forum, the audience will hear from current and former top-level decision-makers along with prestigious scholars and experts.
Thursday, February 16 (4:00 p.m.)
A Conversation with Writer Kyung-uk Kim
Kyung-uk Kim (writer), Bruce Fulton (University of British Columbia)
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Co-Sponsor/s: Korean Literature Translation Institute
Bio: Kyung-uk Kim was born in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, South Korea in 1971. His career as a writer began when he published a novella titled Outsider in 1993 while a university student and won the Best New Writer Award from the quarterly Writer’s World. The story follows a first-person narrator passing several stops on the Seoul subway while recalling memories concerning a high school student he had once taught. While depicting the expressions of anonymous crowds in the urban subterranean world, the narrator continuously mulls over movie scenes and pop music bands. He then published his first novel Acropolis (1995), which depicts university campus life in the early 1990s when interest in ideology abruptly waned. Kim often follows what is called the 1990s generation in South Korea and the culture that dominated that time, and in particular, the music and visual culture of that era. More recently, the world of Kim’s fiction has been moving away from the sphere of contemporary culture. He has also published The Golden Apple (2002), a novel based on Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and Kingdom of a Thousand Years (2007) about the Dutch man Weltevree, who was shipwrecked on the shores of Chosun in 1627.
Thursday, February 2 (4:00 p.m.)
Film Screening: People are the Sky
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (filmmaker)
Location: Room 180, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Summary: Director Dai Sil Kim-Gibson is the first Korean American filmmaker to be given official permission by the North Korean government to film inside its borders. In “People are the Sky,” Kim-Gibson’s eighth and most personal film, the filmmaker makes a pilgrimage to her place of birth in North Korea for the first time in nearly 70 years, to explore if it is still home. Kim-Gibson seamlessly weaves her own personal story as a native born North Korean, with the fractious history of the North/South division and pinpoints the roots of North Korean’s hatred of the United States, giving Americans a much better understanding of the conflict. A mix of interviews, epic images, and graceful musings, People are the Sky offers some of the best political and social history of the relations between North and South Korea, and also a contemplative exploration of the meaning of home. The result is unprecedented, at times startling, for hers is an up close look of the hurts and desires, beauty and contradiction, pride and aspirations of the long held demonized nation.