Description

The post-Liberation days of South Korea, or the early days of post-colonial South Korea (August 1945 to July 1948), witnessed the rise of various competing and conflicting projects. For instance, the nationalist agenda of building a nation-state competed with the agendas that the proponents of ‘overcoming modernism’ and/or ‘pan-Asianism’ formulated. Also, universalistic projects of civilization and democratization contradicted the particularistic race- and region-oriented projects of nationalists and pan-Asianists, and vice versa. These conflicting projects contested for hegemony on the one hand and compromised with each other on the other. This suggests that few, if any, ideas and projects during this time either secured the hegemony or constructed a stereotyped imagination in the contemporary discursive space, to the extent that the post-Liberation days could be termed as ‘an amorphous space and time.’

Chong Myong Im earned his Ph.D degree in Korean history at the University of Chicago. He teaches Korean modern history at Chonnam National University, South Korea. As a Fulbright visiting scholar at UCLA, he is currently writing a book manuscript, titled The State Dialectics of the Republic of Korea for a Modern Nation-State.

Description

Students of South Korean multiculturalism have laudably given voice to the many non-Koreans who live in a proudly single-blood nation and have extensively criticized the state for its self-interested multicultural project. Without critiquing these claims, I argue in this critical review essay that the multicultural scholarship has omitted at least one important group who diversifies South Korea: the part-Black children of military couplings. This dearth of works on Korean-Black children in particular is unexpected in light of Superbowl XL MVP Hines Ward’s 2006 visit being widely seen as the opening salvo on a multicultural South Korea. Yet, because scholars are guided by the lens of the state on who the “multicultural citizens” are and because we typically opt for the conceptual language of ethnicity and ethnic nationalism over that of race and (ethno)racism, Black-descent populations tend to be overlooked. By doing so, I argue, we as scholars inadvertently reify the country’s belief that Blacks are the most biologically and culturally different from them as well as the country’s opposite perception of diasporic Koreans, of Asians from the Pacific region, and of lighter-skinned people. We also enable the state and like-minded adherents to promote policies of cultural assimilation of minorities that, in reality, deny pluralistic equality on the related basis of biological (racial) criteria. The essay briefly concludes with the consequences of inadvertently reifying state hegemonic projects.

Nadia Y. Kim is Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University. She received a doctorate in sociology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2003 and was a faculty member at Brandeis University (Sociology and Women’s & Gender Studies) from 2004-07. Her research interests are ‘race’/ethnicity, nation, citizenship, immigration, transnationalism/diaspora, gender and intersectionality, community politics, Environmental Justice, Asian American Studies, Asian Studies, and Women’s Studies. Her book, Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to L.A. (2008, Stanford University Press) won two awards from the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2009: the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities and the Book of the Year Award from the Section on Asia and Asian America. Her current project examines the gendered processes in fights for clean air among low-income immigrant women of color, namely Latino and Asian American (many of whom are undocumented). She has published in numerous scholarly journals such as Social Problems, Critical Sociology, the Du Bois Review, and Amerasia Journal, won two ASA Early Career Awards and research paper awards, has been an ASA Minority Fellow, and a selected Social Science Research Council Summer Institute participant.

Description

In 1970, just as the second decade of Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian rule was about to begin, an aging American poet made a difficult trip to Korea. Muriel Rukeyser, then the head of the American Center for International P.E.N., hoped to meet Kim Chi-Ha, a dissident poet awaiting the death sentence in prison. Four years earlier, a prominent intellectual of Japan’s New Left named Tsurumi Shunsuke had made the same trip to meet the Korean poet, who was then under house arrest in a sanatorium. These attempts at humanitarian intervention ran aground, however, and resulted in two out-of-joint dialogues that reveal much about the politics of global dissidence in the Cold War era. The talk examines these dialogues, preserved in Rukeyser’s poems and Tsurumi’s interview, as occasions for thinking about the role of literature in Yushin Korea and conditions of possibility for intellectual solidarity in East Asia under “Pax Americana.”

Youngju Ryu is Assistant Professor of Korean Literature at the University of Michigan and the author of forthcoming Writers of the Winter Republic: South Korean Literature and the Ethics of Resistance.

Description

The large-scale influx of Korean Chinese (or Chosǒnjok) migrants from northeastern China into South Korea in the last decades of the twentieth century conjures up images of formerly impassable Cold War borders suddenly rendered passable. Yet opportunities for legally crossing the border into South Korea at this historical juncture were highly circumscribed. Chosǒnjok who desired entry to South Korea responded by becoming experts in manipulating the kinship categories sanctioned by South Korea’s restrictive immigration laws. Faking kinship ironically turned out to be a more expedient means of entering South Korean than relying on real genealogies and the assistance of actual blood relatives. I explore how these tactics of faking kinship point to the tensions between kin-based versus document-based forms ethnic identification in South Korea, and more generally to the difficulties of defining what counts as kinship or ethnicity under contemporary conditions of transnational migration.

Caren Freeman has been teaching in the Anthropology Department as well as coordinating the Summer Language Institute at the University of Virginia since 2007. Freeman’s talk is based on her recent book, Making and Faking Kinship: Marriage and Labor Migration between China and South Korea (Cornell 2011). The book explores how the large-scale migration of ethnic Korean brides and workers from China into South Korea unsettles the way kinship, gender, and ethnonational relations are imagined and practiced on both sides of the migration steam.

Description

This presentation considers the intersection of tourism and war at the 1940 Chosŏn Grand Exposition, which was held in Seoul at the height of Asia-Pacific War. Its opening event was replete with spectacular military images, from warships and tanks to various tributes to the war dead; among other things, the Holy War Pavilion and a tower for military services were exclusively devoted to militarism and the war. However, this talk seeks to extend the reading of this exhibition from a site of wartime propaganda more toward one of wartime battlefield tourism. Located at East Kyŏng Sŏng Station, which connected Korea with Japan and its other colonies, and by exhibiting virtual tours of other regions, the 1940 Exposition can be duly regarded as a part of wartime tourism. This presentation, specifically by juxtaposing the 1940 Exposition with group travel activities, including school excursions (shūgaku ryokō in Japanese; suhak yŏhaeng in Korean), suggests the possibility of reading this exposition as a site of mass mobilization at the level of individuals and of multitudes of people. By virtually touring battlefields, this paper will examine how tourists might have projected their own feelings onto tourist sites and thus have become unconsciously engaged with a larger political agenda. In doing so, these tours played roles both in mobilizing the youth for the war and in creating a larger imperial community for which all the colonies would fight.

Inhye Kang is currently a Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD from McGill University’s Department of Art History and Communication Studies. She is currently transforming her thesis to focus on the intersection of tourism and exhibitions in Japan and Korea from the prewar to the postwar period.

Description

Based on her recent book, Reading North Korea (Harvard University Press, 2012), Sonia Ryang will present her views on cultural logic in North Korea, hoping to have an open discussion with the audience on recent “strange” events there, including nuclear weapons building on one hand and the basketball frenzy on the other.

Sonia Ryang was awarded a PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. She was a Research Fellow at Australian National University and taught at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently Professor of Anthropology and International Studies and C. Maxwell & Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair of Korean Studies, University of Iowa.

Description

The North Korea Research Group (NKRG) will present its research on the situation of North Korean refugee claimants in Canada and Toronto. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada shows that the number of North Korean refugee claimants in Canada has dramatically increased in the past few years.

The aim of this seminar is to consider the reasons that possibly explain this phenomenon, and better understand the settlement process of refugees, particularly in Toronto. In addition, we examine the role of non-governmental refugee organizations to highlight the differences in their approach and objectives. The social consequences and inter-group tensions of these developments are also addressed.

Our research is based on access-to-information requests to the government, interviews with various local organizations, and specific legal case studies. The content of our research presents original and up-to-date information on this important, yet largely unfamiliar issue.

Description

Please purchase tickets at: http://canadakorea.eventbrite.ca/

This conference consists of three panel discussions and a keynote address by The Honourable Yonah Martin, the first person of Korean origin to be named as a Senator in Canada. Our conference aims to raise awareness about the key milestones and turning points in the history of bilateral relations between Canada and Korea; to generate cross-disciplinary discussions on various aspects of the bilateral relations, encompassing immigration, trade, culture and religion; and to inspire discussions on the past and future of the Korean immigrant community in Canada, as well as the Canadian community in Korea.

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in Dec 2012, the year 2013 has been designated as the Year of Korea in Canada, which aims to highlight Korea’s culture, traditions and diversity, and celebrate the contributions of the Korean community to Canadian society. Canada and Korea’s strong relationship is underpinned by a rapidly growing trade relations that reached nearly $11.7 billion in 2011, close cooperation at international level on democratic and human rights issues, and strong people-to-people ties, including through immigration, educational programs and tourism.

As we reflect upon our five decades of incredibly fruitful bilateral relationship, we hope you could join us for an engaging discussion on various aspects of Canadian-Korean relations and help plan what lies ahead of us.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

8:30-9:00 AM
Breakfast & Registration

9:00-9:30 AM
Welcome Remarks
Dr. Ito Peng (Centre for the Study of Korea)
Ms. Jacqueline An (Korean Women’s International Network)
Dr. Greg Donaghy (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada)

9:30-9:45 AM
Introductory Remarks by Mr. Kwang-Kyun Chung, Consul-General of the Republic of Korea

9:45-10:45 AM
Keynote Address by The Honourable Senator Yonah Martin: “Bridging the Gap”
Appreciation by Ms. Eunice Kim, KOWIN Vice-President

10:45-11:00 AM
Coffee break

11:00-12:30 PM
Panel discussion #1
“Korean-Canadian Relations during the Cold War”
Dr. Robert Bothwell (Professor, University of Toronto): “The Korean War & Canada”
Dr. Greg Donaghy (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada): “The Reluctant Suitor: Canada – South Korean Relations in the Cold War’s Shadow, 1947-1973”
Mr. Robert Lee (Former Canadian Trade Commissioner to the ROK): “Korea: From a Recipient of Canadian Aid to a Vibrant Bi-lateral Trade and Investment Relationship.”
Moderator: Ms. Tina Park (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Toronto)

12:30-1:30 PM
Korean Buffet Luncheon

1:30-3:00 PM
Panel discussion #2 “People Matters: Human & Intellectual Exchanges between Canada and Korea in the 20th-21st century”
The Honourable Very Reverend Lois Wilson (Former Moderator of the United Church of Canada): “People to People Exchanges Between Canada and Korea”
Mr. Jae Chong (Korean Canadian Cultural Association): “The formation and development of the Korean-Canadian Community”
Professor Ann Kim (York University) TBC
Moderator: Mr. Minsuk Kim (JD/MBA Candidate, University of Toronto)

3:00-3:15 PM
Coffee break

3:15-4:45 PM
Panel discussion #3
“Moving forward: What lies ahead between Canada & Korea”
Ms. Young-Hae Lee (President, Canada Korea Society): “Living in the World Family: Public Diplomacy – Contributions & Prospects”
Mr. Randall Baran-Chong (Lawyer) “A Hope and a Home: Envisioning Canada as a Leader on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees”
Mr. Ins Choi (Playwright) “Kim’s Convenience: The Story Behind the Play”
Moderator: Mr. Colum Grove-White (War Child Canada)

4:45-5:00 PM
Closing Remarks by Dr. Mairi MacDonald, Director of International Relations Programme & Final Words of Appreciation by Ms. Tina Park, Conference Chair

5:00-6:00 PM
Networking Reception (cash bar)

For any media inquiries or questions, please contact koreacanada50@gmail.com or 647-228-5705

Please view the event poster here