| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, December 8, 2015 | 3:00PM - 6:00PM | The Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
2015 Annual Symposium: “High-Rise Seoul”
Largely unknown to city-dwellers before the 1960s, large apartment complexes (ap’at’ŭ tanji) powerfully shape the landscapes of contemporary South Korean cities. Some are now being memorialized by artists, planners and citizen themselves. How did apparently western-style housing blocks migrate to Korea on such a large scale? To what extent do they reflect the power relations between the global and the local in South Korean cities? What is currently at stake regarding the future of apartments in the contemporary post-industrial Korean society? Combining the perspectives of cultural geography and Korean studies, and using ethnographic materials gathered on sites studied since the mid-1990s (in downtown Seoul) or new ones in the making (Songdo), the symposium will address those issues regarding the significance of South Korea as a “Republic of Apartments” (ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk), where apartment complexes have been the main mediation of the Korean society to urban modernity.
Valérie Gelézeau addresses in her research the various dimensions of space as a social construct in contemporary Korea, via different perspectives including urban geography, cultural geography, regional geography and geopolitics. She is the author of Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk (“The Republic of Apartments” 2007), Atlas de Séoul (2011, a geographical monograph of Seoul as a megacity) and, with Koen De Ceuster and Alain Delissen, the co-editor of De-bordering Korea. Tangible and intangible legacies of the Sunshine Policy (Routledge 2013).
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