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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The Center for Korean Studies, UC Berkeley<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><i><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Proudly presents:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The Luxury of Love: The Retreat/Retirement of Single Gay Men and the Rise of the "Bats" in post-IMF South Korea<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies| <b><u>April 6</u></b> | 4 p.m<span style='color:#4D5963'>. | <a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/map/3dmap/3dmap.shtml?athletic"><span style='color:#03959C;text-decoration:none'>Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor)</span></a>, </span>Conference Room<span style='color:#4D5963'><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#4D5963'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Speaker: <b>John (Songpae) Cho</b>, Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Sponsor: <span style='color:#4D5963'><a href="http://ieas.berkeley.edu/cks/"><span style='color:#03959C;text-decoration:none'>Center for Korean Studies (CKS)</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#4D5963'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>“Bats” refers to married gay men who blur the affective, emotional, temporal/spatial, and financial boundaries maintained by single gay men between their weekend gay lives and their weekday heterosexual ones. Ironically, just as many single gay men are retreating and retiring from their gay lives in order to focus on their careers or even marrying women under the pressures of South Korea’s neoliberal and biopolitical reforms, designed to boost the flagging birth rate and stave off an imminent crisis of biological/social reproduction, married gay men, who were all but visible during the period of the country’s gay community building in the mid-1990s till late 1990s, are emerging as a powerful new sexual constituency. The same force that compels many single gay men to retreat/retire—the lack of job security and familial support, especially in their own age, from their own wives and children—is what is seen to enable married gay men to enjoy the “luxury of love.” <br><br>In assessing the paradoxical fall and rise of these two sexual constituencies, this presentation asks: How do emotional caring, physical nurturing, and even romantic love become the purview and luxury of the rich or the lucky few? Or, more broadly, where does “security” come from in this age of neoliberal insecurity and bio-politics? Indeed, in attending to the pathos, regret, and disempowerment expressed by gay men in post-IMF South Korea, it is too easy to miss those most absent/present within these men’s narratives—the voices of those women who are being currently actively targeted by the Korean patriarchal state to marry, take care of, and reproduce the nation. <br><br>Ironically, in mobilizing and exploiting these women in order to maintain their sense of emotional stability, secure their “social face,” and fit into the homosocial bonding of the nation, both single and married gay men may be more complicit with—rather than challenge—the Korean government’s contemporary bio-political project.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Event Contact: <span style='color:#4D5963'><a href="mailto:cks@berkeley.edu"><span style='color:#03959C;text-decoration:none'>cks@berkeley.edu</span></a>, </span>510-642-5674<span style='color:#4D5963'><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>