[KS] Please Share Upcoming GWIKS Premodern Korea Lecture

[Institute for Korean Studies, GW]

Hello,

Please share this upcoming event on the listserv:

*The Premodern Korea Lecture Series*

*Governing Justice: Legal Interpretation and Judicial Practice in Chosŏn
Korea*
*Jungwon Kim*

*King Sejong Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures,*
*Columbia University*



*Friday, March 20th, 20261o:00 A.M. – 11:00 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
(EDT)    Virtual Event via Zoom*
Register Here! <https://click.gwu.edu/click/k0k6dn/4nszi0c/08d7pqb>

*Event Description*
This talk explores the role of legal knowledge, particularly the expertise
of specialized legal officers, in shaping judicial practice in Chosŏn
Korea. These officers constituted a distinct category of legal expertise
within the bureaucratic hierarchy, differentiated from Confucian scholar
officials by formal legal training and technical authority.
Institutionalized through specialized examinations in law, they occupied a
pivotal position in assisting local magistrates in adjudication and guiding
judicial interpretation and decision making. Drawing on an array of
archival sources, including law codes, legal commentaries, trial records,
and evaluations of official performance, the talk traces how these
specialists were trained, how they exercised authority in local courts, and
how their work was supervised and assessed. By centering these often
overlooked figures, the talk illuminates the intricacies of legal
interpretation in practice and considers how evolving forms of expertise
and legal literacy influence judicial decisions at the local level while
informing the relationship between technical knowledge, judicial authority,
and the pursuit of justice in Chosŏn Korea.
*Speaker*
*Jungwon Kim *
*Jungwon Kim *is King Sejong Associate Professor in the Department of East
Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. A historian of
premodern Korea with a particular focus on the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910),
her research examines gender and sexuality, law and justice, crime and
punishment, ritual and emotion, women’s writing, and the history of
knowledge. She is the author of Virtue That Matters: Chastity Culture and
Social Power in Chosŏn Korea, 1392–1910 (Harvard University Asia Center,
2025). Her other publications include co-authoring Wrongful Death: Selected
Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea (University of Washington
Press, 2014) and co-editing Beyond Death: The Politics of Suicide and
Martyrdom in Korea (University of Washington Press, 2019). She also edited
the special issue “Archives, Archival Practices, and the Writing of History
in Premodern Korea” in the Journal of Korean Studies (2019). She is
currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Families in
Trials: Local Courts and Legal Culture in Chosŏn Korea. She received her
PhD from Harvard University.
*Moderator*
* Jisoo Kim*
*Jisoo Kim *is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History,
International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures at George
Washington University. She specializes in gender, sexuality, law, emotions,
and affect in Korean history. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice:
Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of
Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of
the Association for Asian Studies. She is currently a fellow at the Harvard
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2024-2025), working on a book
project tentatively entitled Criminalizing Intimacy: Marriage, Adultery,
and Gender Constitutionalism in Korea, 1469-2015. In 2023, she received a
Distinguished Research Award from the Ministry of Education in South Korea.
She was Founding Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies
(2017-2024) and Founding Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource
Center (2018-2024). She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Korean
Studies (2019-Present). She received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in East
Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University.
Program Agenda <https://click.gwu.edu/click/k0k6dn/4nszi0c/g1e7pqb>




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