[KS] Fulbright Forum - February 29th

Executive Assistant executive.assistant at fulbright.or.kr
Mon Feb 4 21:05:44 EST 2008


Fulbright Forum

7:00 p.m. on Friday, February 29, 2008
R.S.V.P. by Wednesday, February 27th

The Korean-American Educational Commission invites you to join us at the 
next Fulbright Forum for a talk and Q&A session on "Dealing with 
Treason: Retribution against Collaborators in Korea from a Comparative 
Perspective, 1945-1951" with researcher Konrad M. Lawson.

The Fulbright Forum serves as a periodic gathering for Fulbright 
grantees past and present and anyone who wants to attend. This month's 
Forum will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, February 29th in the 6^th 
floor conference room at the Fulbright Building in Mapo-gu, Seoul, with 
a snack reception to follow in the 3^rd floor administrative offices. 
Please reply to executive.assistant at fulbright.or.kr 
<mailto:executive.assistant at fulbright.or.kr> by Wednesday, February 27th 
in order to confirm your attendance, and feel free to share this 
invitation with others. For a map and directions, see the KAEC website 
at www.fulbright.or.kr <http://www.fulbright.or.kr/>.

Presentation Summary:

In the aftermath of World War II, nations recently occupied by the Axis 
powers all faced the challenges of postwar economic reconstruction and, 
in many cases, the coming of new political orders. The widespread 
popular demands for the punishment of traitors, those collaborators who 
had worked with Japanese and German occupiers, were met by the early 
postwar regimes with differing degrees of enthusiasm. This was no less 
true in the rapidly decolonizing territories of Asia. The process of 
dealing with treason was a form of political retribution that was 
carried out in many different ways, including national level trials, 
dismissals, blacklisting, suspension of civil rights, village tribunals, 
individual acts of violence, and outbursts of mass slaughter.  
Retribution against accused traitors was, from the beginning, a deeply 
political affair, with the questions of who to punish and how to punish 
often leading to awkward and divisive debates with high stakes for early 
postwar leaders around the world. After giving an overview of how the 
issue of collaboration with Japan during the colonial period was handled 
in early post-World War II northern and southern Korea, this talk will 
focus on putting political retribution into a comparative perspective by 
comparing this process and the passionate debates about traitors in 
Korea with those found in other postwar and postcolonial histories.

Biography:

Konrad M. Lawson is a PhD Candidate in the History Department of Harvard 
University.  He is currently a Fulbright Junior Researcher conducting 
research for his dissertation, "Treason and the Reconstruction of Nation 
in East Asia, 1937-1951" which focuses on political retribution against 
accused collaborators in China and Korea.

Konrad Mitchell Lawson
kmlawson at fas.harvard.edu <mailto:kmlawson at fas.harvard.edu>

___________________________________

Korean-American Educational Commission
Fulbright Building
168-15 Yomni-dong Mapo-gu
Seoul, 121-874
Republic of Korea

office: 02-3275-4004
fax: 02-3275-4028
www.fulbright.or.kr

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