[KS] September Colloquia at UC Berkeley Center for Korean Studies

Center for Korean Studies cks at berkeley.edu
Mon Sep 10 14:37:31 EDT 2012


The Center for Korean Studies

University of California, Berkeley

 

Cordially invites you to the following colloquia

 

Description: mul kwisin

 

Ghosts of Premodern Korea: Haunting and Balancing the Cosmos

Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies: Institute of East Asian Studies | September 17 | 4 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor), Conference Room

 

Speaker: Michael Pettid, Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies, Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies, Binghamton University

 

Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies (CKS)

 

Given the significance of death to humans, an understanding of how societies conceive of death, the afterlife, and what might occur to the dead can reveal a great deal of how a given society understands its place within the cosmos. Particularly interesting are those beliefs concerning the condition of the dead after death; specifically, the nature and

function of ghosts.

 

There are numerous accounts in the literature of the Koryŏ and early Chosŏn periods in Korea that feature encounters with ghosts or beings from beyond the human world. While these accounts can be sometimes humorous or frightening, a more important value is the insight they offer into the way

that the peoples of these times understood death and the afterlife.

 

Narratives of ghosts can range from didactic tales that aim at altering the lifestyles of the living to those accounts that reveal social fears such as the retaliation of one who wrongly died. This talk will use period accounts from Koryŏ and early Chosŏn to examine how death was understood. This study will thus bring into relief the understandings of these peoples concerning death and the afterlife, and how this was reflected in the lives of the living.

 

Event Contact: cks at berkeley.edu, 510-642-5674

 

_________________________________________________________

 

Description: http://events.berkeley.edu/images/user_uploads/0_scarredheritage.jpg

 

Scarred Heritage: Achieving Peace and Reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula

Seminar: Center for Korean Studies: Institute of East Asian Studies | September 19 | 2-6 p.m. |  Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor)

 

Speakers: T.J. Pempel, Jeong Gwan Lee, Bruce Cumings, Philip Yun, David Kang, David Straub, Victor Cha

 

Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies (CKS), Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in San Francisco, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies

 

2:00-2:15 Opening - T.J. Pempel (UC Berkeley)

 

2:15-2:30 Welcoming Remarks - Jeong Gwan Lee (Korean Consul General)

 

2:30-3:00 A Reexamination of Kim Daejung's Sunshine Policy and Its Aftermath - Bruce Cumings (University of Chicago) 

 

3:00-3:30 North Korea's Diplomatic and Security Strategy - Philip Yun (Ploughshares Fund) 

 

3:30-4:00 Explaining China's Seemingly Irrational Support of North Korea - David Kang (University of Southern California) 

 

China continues to support North Korea, much to the consternation and confusion of many outsider observers. Yet Chinese support of the DPRK is not really that surprising. Some have even gone so far as to call it a "Sunshine Policy with Chinese characteristics." This talk will explore China's views of the DPRK and suggest reasons both for Chinese support of North Korea, and why such support is unlikely to change in the near future.

 

4:00-4:30 A Principled Approach: U.S. Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula - David Straub (Stanford University) 

 

Since the Korean War, U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula has been remarkably consistent. The United States has been a strong supporter of its treaty ally South Korea; toward North Korea, the United States has had little interest in anything but inducing it not to do certain things, especially not to develop nuclear weapons. Straub, a former career U.S. diplomat and Korea specialist now at Stanford, will explain the factors that have long shaped American policymakers’ attitudes toward Korea—and that will likely continue to do so.

 

4:30-5:00 Korea and the Next Administration - Victor Cha (Georgetown University) 

 

How will domestic-political change in the United States and in South Korea affect alliance relations? How will it affect policy towards North Korea? How will North Korea respond to the new administrations in Washington and Seoul? While there are no clear answers, there is a range of possible outcomes. Cha will discuss why this range is fairly narrowly defined by past policy failures, past experiences, and changing political climates in the U.S. and the ROK. There are, however, a number of hot button issues that could take relations on a difficult track.

 

5:00-5:45 Panel Discussion and Q&A Moderated by T.J. Pempel (UC Berkeley)

 

5:45-6:15 Reception (IEAS Lobby) 

 

Event Contact: cks at berkeley.edu, 510-642-5674

 

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Bargaining with Kinship: Chosonjok Migrant Mothers in the Age of Korea Wind

Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies | September 28 | 4 p.m. |  Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor)

 

Speaker: Caren Freeman, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

 

Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies (CKS), Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)

 

The large-scale influx of Korean Chinese (or Chosonjok) 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 Chosonjok opportunities for mobility at this historical juncture were largely created by the migrants themselves and at great cost to their families and communities in northeastern China. Chosonjok mothers in particular became experts in manipulating the kinship categories sanctioned by South Korea's restrictive immigration laws. Arranging a "fake marriage" to a South Korean man, traveling in the guise of the mother of a married-out bride, and posing as a separated family member (isan kajok) in search of long-lost kin were all common ways of exploiting South Korea's kin-based policies. 

 

While effective in circumventing the law, these acts of "faking kinship" generated a unique set of legal, moral and cultural dilemmas for migrant women and their family members. I will explore these dilemmas and chart the emergence of a new morality whereby kinship identities and relationships had become bargaining chips in a high-risk game of transnational mobility. As Chosonjok mothers contemplated the risks involved in wagering their marital relationships for an entree into the Korean labor market, they provoked moralizing discourses about the proper role of wives and mothers. I examine these discourses to see what they reveal about local norms of parenting and conjugal life. In contrast to findings in the literature on transnational motherhood in other parts of the world, the large-scale exodus of Chosonjok mothers posed the greatest challenge, not to existing models of maternity, but rather to models of matrimony.

 

Event Contact: cks at berkeley.edu, 510-642-5674

 

For updates on upcoming events, please visit:

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