gwiks – East Asia National Resource Center

Talk flyer with a picture of Ruth Mostern and a satellite image of the Yellow River delta

Wednesday, September 4th, 2024 at 5:00pm ET

Virtual Event via Zoom

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About the event:

Over the last century, numerous Koreans have moved overseas for various reasons. Migration involves not only the relocation of people but also the movement of goods and cultural practices, including language, traditions, thoughts, behaviours, and beliefs. In this study, Koo introduces the performance culture of Zainichi Koreans (Korean residents in Japan) and discusses how their engagement with traditional Korean culture in Japan manifest the flexibility and permeability of national identity and traditional culture in a transnational context. Over the last four decades, Korean folk drumming (p’ungmul or nongak) has become prominent in Japan as a tool for Korean heritage education and a marker of ethnic identity. She engages with several Zainichi Korean musicians who devote themselves to p’ungmul, pursuing it as their full-time profession or as a serious leisure activity. The majority of p’ungmul musicians in Japan are third- or fourth-generation Korean migrants presenting a complex mix of state, national, and cultural affiliations as North Koreans, South Koreans, and naturalized Japanese. Considering the community’s social and historical complexity and the distinctness of each individual musician, she delves into what Korean drumming informs and teaches us about Korean diaspora and Zainichi identities.

About the Speaker

Dr. Sunhee Koo is a Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and the Chair of Anthropology at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research focuses on East Asian performing arts, exploring the complex intersections of ethnicity, nation, and identity. In 2021, she published her first monograph, Sound of the Border: Music and Identity of the Korean Minority in China, with the University of Hawaiʻi Press. She is currently working on her second monograph, examining contemporary Korean identity, national music, and the transmigration of North and South Koreans, under contract with the same press. Since 2024, she has served as the President of the Korean Studies Association of Australasia (KSAA).

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies and GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) together received the highly regarded designation of National Resource Center (NRC) for East Asian Studies. The designation — the first time these two centers have received NRC status — enhances the institutes’ ability to engage the broader public community, including students, K-12 educators, HBCUs, policymakers, military veterans, journalists and the general public on regional and global issues of importance. With this award, GW joins a handful of other world-leading universities with this honor, including Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. Additionally, the Sigur Center and GWIKS have been awarded funding for Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships which support undergraduate and graduate students studying modern foreign languages and related area or international studies.

Founded in the year 2016, the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) is a university wide institute housed in the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. The establishment of the GWIKS was made possible by a generous grant from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). The mission of GWIKS is to consolidate, strengthen, and grow the existing Korean studies program at GW, and more generally in the greater D.C. area and beyond. The Institute of Korean Studies enables and enhances productive research and education relationships within GW, and among the many experts throughout the region and the world.

Korea Policy Forum

South Korea’s National Assembly Elections & US-ROK Relations: Journalists’ Views

Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 · 9 am-10:15 am EDT

Virtual Event on Zoom

About this event:

On April 10th, South Korea will hold general elections for its National Assembly. While the major opposition party strives to maintain its current majority party status, the emergence of new third parties complicates the traditional two-way race between the ruling and major opposition parties. The results of the elections will greatly impact the remaining three years of the Yoon government’s term. What were the main political parties’ strategies and challenges leading up to the elections and how did they lead to the election outcome? How will the political landscape, including the power relations within the main political parties, shift in the coming months? What will be the potential impact of the election results on Seoul’s repositioning its foreign and security policy? Please join the GW Institute for Korean Studies and East Asia National Resource Center for an online discussion by American and South Korean journalists on the prospects of a new domestic political geography in South Korea and its potential impact on U.S.-ROK relations.

Heejun Kim (left) is the Head of the International News Department at YTN, a news channel in Korea. Prior to this role, she served as the head of Foreign Affairs and Security News. Kim was a former Washington Correspondent from 2016 to 2019, during which she conducted exclusive interviews with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Herbert R. McMaster. Kim was a professional fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University in New York from 2011 to 2012. She also serves as a policy advisor at MOFA. Additionally, she co-translated “International Negotiations” by Victor A. Kremenyuk. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from Ewha Womans University and completed her doctoral program in International Politics at Kyunggi University.

Jung Eun Lee (second to left) is the Deputy Managing Director of the Newsroom at the Dong-A Ilbo Daily in South Korea. She worked as a Washington correspondent from 2019 to 2021. She specializes in national security and foreign affairs, and has been reporting on North Korea, denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy. She was dispatched to Channel A, the affiliate broadcasting company of Dong-A Ilbo, as a senior reporter at the political desk in 2014. She was a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies from 2014 to 2015. She obtained her B.A. in journalism from Seoul National University, and an M.A. from the Graduate School of North Korean Studies.

Tim Martin (second to right) is the Korea bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, where he oversees news coverage on the Korean Peninsula. He has been based in Seoul since early 2017, with prior stints at the Journal’s offices in New York, Chicago and Atlanta—where he covered public health and the CDC. He holds a B.A. in Journalism from Eastern Illinois University and also previously studied Korean at Seoul National University.

Josh Rogin (right) is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post. He is also the author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century, released in March, 2021 by Houghton Mifflin Harcout. Previously, he has covered foreign policy and national security for Bloomberg View, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week magazine, and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. His work has been featured on outlets including NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, NPR, and many more. He has been recognized with the Interaction Award for Excellence in International Reporting and as a Finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He has also received journalism fellowships from the Knight Foundation, the East-West Center, and the National Press Foundation. He has a B.A. in international affairs from the George Washington University and studied at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Ali Rogin of the PBS News Hour.

Moderator

Yonho Kim is the Associate Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies and an Associate Research Professor of Practice. He specializes in North Korea’s mobile telecommunications and U.S. policy towards North Korea. Kim is the author of North Korean Phone Money: Airtime Transfers as a Precursor to Mobile Payment System (2020), North Korea’s Mobile Telecommunications and Private Transportation Services in the Kim Jong-un Era (2019) and Cell Phones in North Korea: Has North Korea Entered the Telecommunications Revolution? (2014). His research findings were covered by various media outlets, including Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Yonhap News, and Libération. Prior to joining GWIKS, he extensively interacted with the Washington policy circle on the Korean peninsula as Senior Researcher of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Senior Reporter for Voice of America’s Korean Service, and Assistant Director of the Atlantic Council’s Program on Korea in Transition. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in International Relations from Seoul National University, and an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Registration

The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

Founded in the year 2016, the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) is a university wide Institute housed in the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. The establishment of the GWIKS in 2016 was made possible by a generous grant from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). The mission of GWIKS is to consolidate, strengthen, and grow the existing Korean studies program at GW, and more generally in the greater D.C. area and beyond. The Institute enables and enhances productive research and education relationships within GW, and among the many experts throughout the region and the world.