The Korea File

Academics have long examined the relationship between nation-states and their "internal others," like immigrants and ethnic or racial minorities. 

Now, with her award-winning book ‘Contested Embrace: Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea’ Jaeeun Kim shifts this focus to look at how a state relates to people it sees as diasporic "external members".

In this conversation, Kim shares some of the ideas behind her comparative, historical, and ethnographic study of the complex relationships between the states in the Korean peninsula, colonial-era Korean migrants to Japan and northeast China and their descendants, and the states in which they’ve lived over the course of the twentieth century.

To see Jaeun Kim’s full Nam Center lecture, look for ‘Contested Embrace: Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea’,on Youtube.  Subscribe to the Nam Center’s Youtube channel at 'umichncks'.

Become a financial supporter of this podcast at patreon.com/thekoreafile

For more information on this lecture go to

https://www.ii.umich.edu/ncks/news-events/events.detail.html/42278-9593311.html

Mastered by Chris Hernandez at Villeray Studios.

The Nation magazine’s resident Korea expert Tim Shorrock discusses American political instability, assesses the unthinkable cost of a new Korean civil war and examines the international community's role in resolving the nuclear crisis.

Become a sustaining patron of this podcast at https://www.patreon.com/thekoreafile

Music on this episode includes the national anthems of the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

What does it mean to treat nationalism as a commodity? 

In this conversation, Nam Center Postdoctoral Fellow Jiun Bang discusses the commodification surrounding the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and challenges some of the traditional assumptions behind our perceptions of nationalism. 

And- a conversation on the strange linguistic character of the name Ehwa Womans University. Bang shares some little known facts about her alma mater. All this and more on episode 67 of The Korea File. 

This episode was produced in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies. 

Music on this episode:

John Lopker's 'My Dear Dokdo' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTSMNaFB8Rkand also 

Kim Kyung-min's 'Dokdo, dokdo, dokdo' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT3NcD5162s

Since 2009, the Singapore-based non-profit has facilitated training workshops for everyday North Koreans in Economics, Entrepreneurship and Urban Planning in metropolitan Pyongyang and elsewhere around the country.

In this conversation, Chosun Exchange Associate Director of Research Dr. Andray Abrahamian discusses how the introduction of some aspects of a free market economy under the Kim Jong-eun regime is changing the way North Koreans look at capitalism. We’ll also talk about the prospects for further change in North Korean society and discuss how initiatives like Chosun Exchange could impact how the United States, South Korea and other countries approach North Korea policy. 

Also: how can political leadership in the United States and the Koreas move past saber-rattling and militaristic rhetoric? How will South Korean policy towards the North change in the post-Park Geun-hye era? And what's it like to fly Air Koryo?

Music on this episode is 'Great Comrade Kim Jong-eun, We Know Nobody But You' from KCTV State Television:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLbWjwIwKrI

This episode was produced in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies. 

To see Andray Abrahamian’s full Nam Center Undergraduate Fellows lecture, look for “Social Changes You See When Working in North Korea” on Youtube. Subscribe to Nam Center lecture series at 'umichncks'.

How effective is political polling today? With social trends pointing to a continuing decrease in the rate of democratic participation, in South Korea and elsewhere around the world, how can polls remain representative?

In our conversation prior to his recent lecture at the University of Michigan, UC Berkley Professor Taeku Lee discusses how the political science of public polling, until recently a primarily American area of study, has gained academic traction in South Korea over the last decade. 

This episode was produced in collaboration with the Nam Center for Korean Studies. Subscribe to the Nam Center’s Youtube channel at umichncks.

Music on this episode is 7080 star ??? with ???.

Joshua Van Lieu is a historian of 20th century East Asian politics and international relations and an authority on the histories of Joseon Korea and Late Imperial China. 

In this conversation, Van Lieu discusses the diplomatic intrigue of the Qing-Korea relationship and explains how the pageantry of tributary practice successfully manipulated Western preconceptions of the “unknowable orient”. 

This episode was produced in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies. 

To see Joshua Van Lieu’s full lecture, find “The Act was Oriental between Orientals: The Persistence of Late Victorian Translations of the Twilight of Qing-Chosun Tributary Practice” on Youtube.

The Koreas remain officially at war, a situation unchanged since 1953 when the Armistice Agreement, signed by China, North Korea and the United States, brought an end to active hostilities on the peninsula. 

But the Armistice was not a peace settlement and tensions along the DMZ, the 38th parallel, have continued ever since. This long stalemate between the divided Koreas has prevented most kinds of social, cultural and political exchanges, with some exceptions. 

In the conclusion to our two-part conversastion, I. Jonathan Kief, a Korea Foundation post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies, continues to explore the unconventional perspective on the relationship between writers in North and South Korea, in both the real and imagined ways in which literature of the post-war period managed to cross the 38th parallel in the post-war era. 

This episode was produced in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies.

In his research I. Jonathan Kief, a Korea Foundation post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies, explores an unconventional perspective on the relationship between writers in North and South Korea.

Here, in the first of a two-part conversation, he discusses the real as well as imagined ways in which literature of the post-war period managed to cross the 38th parallel and attempts to outline a more complicated and nuanced understanding of what division literature has meant in Korea over the years.

This episode was produced in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies.

To find our more on Kief's research or to view other lectures from the Nam Center Colloquium series , visit https://www.youtube.com/user/umichncks/featured

In her recent book, ‘The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea’, professor of sociology Hyun-ok Park, of Toronto's York University, demonstrates that the unseen currents of capitalism, rather than territorial integration or family union, are driving a movement towards peninsular integration and a united Korea.

In this conversation, prior to her recent lecture at the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies, she discusses how migrant labor, identity politics, social activism and media spectacle are each playing a part in the gradual trend towards unification and why she sees the capitalist integration of the peninsula and its diaspora as a new democratic moment for the Korean people.

Music on this episode: Park In-Hee - ??? (1976)

For more information on the University of Michigan's Nam Center for Korean Studies go to https://www.ii.umich.edu/ncks

At a recent lecture at the University of Michigan's Nam Center for Korean Studies, Pepperdine University sociologist Rebecca Kim spoke on the phenomena of South Korean evangelical missionaries proselytizing in the United States. 

Exploring the relationship between the two countries since World War 2, her talk addresses how Korean missionaries with the University Bible Fellowship attempted to evangelize the college-educated and why the UFB's outreach efforts focused racially only on white Americans. 

To see Kim's talk in full, go to https://www.youtube.com/user/umichncks

Music on this episode is from 70s Christian singer ???.

This conversation was recorded in March, 2016. It's the first in a series of episodes in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies.