Global Korea Project
The Global Korea Project is an interdisciplinary effort in the Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences to expand student engagement with the global dimensions of Korean history, politics, and culture.
The Project hosts cultural events, academic lectures, and visiting diplomats on campus while promoting an array of Korea-related programs and courses.
Launched in Fall 2023, it is led by Prof. Ingu Hwang.
Key activities:
- Distinguished Lecture Series
- Culture and Diversity Programming
- International Student Engagement
Cornerstone of the Nation: The Defense Industry and the Building of Modern Korea under Park Chung Hee
Peter Kwon, University of Albany, SUNY
Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 5:00pm
Andover Room, Connolly House (300 Hammond Street)
Peter Kwon is Assistant Professor of Korean studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. His research focuses on the history of the Korean defense industry, military-civilian relations, the dynamics between authoritarian politics and civil society in East Asia, US-Korea relations, the political economy of East Asia, and Korean nationalism. His works have been published in the Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Korean Studies, National Interest, East Asia Forum, and Journal of Social History, among others. He earned a Master's degree in Regional Studies-East Asia and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages (with a focus on modern Korean history) from Harvard University.
His book Cornerstone of the Nation: The Defense Industry and the Building of Modern Korea under Park Chung Hee was published by Harvard University Press in March 2024.
The Chip War and National Sovereignty
Young-Sun Park, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Tuesday, March 12, 2024, 5:00pm
Andover Room, Connolly House (300 Hammond Street)
Co-Sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and International Studies Program
Young-Sun Park is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Most recently, she was a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. In 2020, she was the first Korean Minister to serve as a chair of AMP committee at the World Economy Forum in Davos. From April 2019 to January 2021 she served as Minister of SMEs and Startups for the Republic of Korea. Prior to her cabinet position, she served as a Member of the National Assembly in Korea for 16 years, where she was the first woman floor leader and the first woman chairperson of the Legislation & Judiciary Committee. Before she became a career politician, she was a chief of economy division, an anchor for a national news and a journalist for 22 years at a major TV station, MBC, in Korea. She is a recipient of many awards, including but not limited to, “The Baek Bong Shin Sa Award” selected by political news reporters in 2008, 2010 and 2011, “The Best National Assemblymember Award for the National Audit,” and “The Most Distinguished Politician in the 21st Century Award Who Has Shined Korea in 2010."
She is the author of five books: Park, Young-Sun and the Great Transformation (2021); Walking in Seoul (2018); Who is the leader? (2015); Make Your Own History (2012); and Interviews by Park, Young-sun: The Fragrance of People (2002).
The Politics of Time and Revisionist History in Post-1987 South Korea
Namhee Lee, UCLA
Friday, February 23, 2024, 5:00pm
Andover Room, Connolly House (300 Hammond Street)
Co-Sponsored by the Asian Studies Program
Namhee Lee is Professor of Asian Languages and Culture, and Director of the Center for Korean Studies, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Cornell, 2007), The South Korean Democratization Movement: A Sourcebook (co-edited with Kim Won, Academy of Korean Studies, 2016), and Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea (Duke University Press, 2022).
Prof. Lee's lecture is drawn from research published in her book Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea (Duke, 2022). The lecture explores the politics of time that the recent revisionist South Korean scholarship is engages in, and its historiographical and ethical implications. Erasing, distorting, or silencing a certain kind of memory, the scholarship discursively assigns as past or anachronistic all those phenomena that do not accommodate contemporary society’s hegemonic ideal. It also vindicates contemporaries concerning injustices that happened in the past and to a present that has not rendered justice for past historical injustices. To make amends for the previously unacknowledged suffering of the past generation and to make efforts to continue the unconcluded struggles of the past, a poetics of remembrance is suggested as an alternative.
The Legacy of the Chinese Entry during the Korean War:
The Misperception of the US during the Vietnam War
Tae-gyun Park, Seoul National University
Thursday, October 12, 2023, 5pm in Fulton 502
Tae-Gyun Park is a Professor of Korean Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) from 1997-1999, and a HYI Coordinate Research Scholar from 2007-2008. A frequent advisor to television documentary series on Korean history, he is the author of Ally and Empire: Two Myths in the Korea-U.S. Relationship; The Korean War: The Unfinished War, the War That Must End; and Regional Order in East Asia: From Empire to Community. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Korean History at Seoul National University.
Global Korea’s Past and Future: A Puzzle of Peculiarity vs. Generality
Prof. Myung-Lim Park, Yonsei University
Thursday, September 21, 5pm
Andover Room, Connolly House (300 Hammond Street),
Myung-Lim Park is Director of the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library, and a Professor at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), where he teaches political theory, peace studies, constitutionalism, Korean Studies, and East Asian international relations in the Graduate School's Department of Area Studies. From 1995 to 2008 he co-organized and participated in fifteen inter-Korean conferences with North Korean scholars and officials. Park is the author of The Origins and Coming of the Korean War (1996); the Requiem for Peace: Korea, 1950 (2002); and Design for the Future Republic (2011).
Celebrating the Lunar New Year with Korean Folk Art (Minhwa) Culture
Through Lecture, Demonstration, Workshop, and Food
Thursday, February 15, 5:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Andover Room, Connolly House (300 Hammond Street)
Schedule:
- 5:00-5:20pm: Lecture
by Ms. In Sun Cho (image at right): “Understanding Korean Culture Through Its Folk Art: Minhwa”
- 5:20-5:40pm: Demonstration of Minhwa
by Ms. In Sun Cho
- 5:40-6:30pm: Hands-On Workshop with Students,
guided by Ms. In Sun Cho
- 6:30-7:30pm: Reception: Sollal Celebration
(Traditional Korean New Year)
The workshop is limited to 35 participants; register here!
Organized in collaboration with the BC Korean Student Association. Co-sponsored by the Department of Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies; the Asian StudiesProgram; and the International Studies Program.
In Sun Cho is an acclaimed minhwa painter and grand-prize winner at the Korean Minhwa Museum Exhibition. After studying visual design at the Seoul National University of Science and Technology, she has shown her paintings in numerous exhibitions, including the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics Arts Exhibition and the Korea Design Center Exhibition in Seoul, as amember of the Traditional Painting Division at the Ewha Women’s University Color and Design Research Institute. Currently residing in the Greater Boston Area, Ms. Cho is a member of the Korean Traditional Color Research Association and the Korea Cultural Society of Boston.
“A Birth” (Directed by Heung Sik Park, 2022)
Movie Screening and Panel Discussion
Thursday, November 2, 2023, 5pm in Devlin Hall 008
"A Birth" depicts the life of Kim Tae-gon (1821–1846, a.k.a. Andrew Kim), the first Korean-born Catholic priest whose missionary work and martyrdom led to his canonization as a saint in 1984. He is now celebrated as the patron saint of Korea. Kim was secretly baptised at age 15 and left the country (where Christianity was suppressed) to study at seminaries in Macau and the Philippines. After nine years he was ordained a priest in Shanghai by the French bishop Jean Joseph Jean-Baptiste Ferréol before returning to Korea, where he was executed two years later.
This event is held in collaboration with the BC Korean Student Association, the International Studies Program, and International Education Week.
Sogang-BC Workshop
New scholarly collaboration planned for April 2024 among faculty and graduate students at BC and the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University (a Jesuit university in Seoul).
Global Conversations
Via Zoom; Dates ongoing
Global Conversations is a student-led program at BC to host peer-to-peer video conversations between small groups of BC students and students from universities abroad. BC students have discussed a range of topics about Korea and East Asia with students from Sophia University and Sogong University.
- “Diversities in South Korea,” July 2023 with BC participants Rongwei Zhu, Neil Li, Boyu Jin, Sophia Sohn, and Megan Friday.
Korean Language Table and Speech Competition
- The Boston-area Korean Language Table is hosted by Prof. Seung Hee Jeon on the first Friday of every month. Spring 2024 meetings will be:
- Friday, February 2, 2024: 12:00 - 1:30pm in Lyons Hall cafeteria
- Friday, March 1, 2024: 12:00 - 1:30pm in Lyons Hall cafeteria
- Friday, April 5, 2024: 12:00 - 1:30pm in Lyons Hall cafeteria
- Meetings are sponsored by the Sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston.
- The New England Korean Speech Competition takes place each April. In 2023 it was hosted at Boston College.
Collaborative COIL Course Sessions
Students at BC join classes at Sophia Univeristy in Tokyo and Sogang University in Seoul to discuss human rights, colonial legacies, and social justice.
- April 2024: Topic TBA, with Prof. Wonkyung Rhee, Sophia University
- April 2023: “Colonial forced labor,” with Prof. Wonkyung Rhee, Sophia University
Contentious History and the Politics of Contemporary Korea
Summer course taught by Prof. Ingu Hwang
Course number: INTL/HIST 2856
Approved for CC, GC-SM, and PEDS-PE/DS electives in the International Studies Program; and an electve in the History Department.
This introductory immersion course surveys the contentious intersection between history and politics in contemporary Korea on the topics of decolonization, division, development, and democratization. In addition to the class discussion, students will be guided to actively participate in the historical and cultural immersion/excursion programs, including the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, the DMZ tour, and the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library and Museum.
- June/July 2022 Ewha Women's University, Seoul
- June 25-July 22, 2023 Sogang University, Seoul
- June/July 2024 Sogang University, Seoul