[KS] [UPDATED] Please Share Upcoming GWIKS Premodern Korea Lecture

[Institute for Korean Studies, GW]

Hello,

Please share this *updated program *announcement for our upcoming Premodern
Korea Lecture with Jungwon Kim.

*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://www.eventbrite.com/e/1984573157738?aff=oddtdtcreator>

*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 influenced 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 M. 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, justice,
emotions, and affect in Korean history. Kim penned the award-winning book *The
Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn
Korea* (2015),
coedited JaHyun Kim Haboush’s posthumous book *The Great East Asian War and
the Birth of the Korean Nation *(2016, coedited with William Haboush), and
edited *Emotions, Affect, and Narrative in Korean History and Culture *(April
2026). She is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of
marriage and adultery law in South Korea. This book project was supported
by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship (2024–25).
She was the founding director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies
(2017–24) and the founding co-director of the East Asia National Resource
Center (2018–24). She served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of
Korean Studies (2019–25).
Program Agenda
<https://emma-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/0oueb/be8190e13e6009faea7fca46fd40b628/Jungwon_Kim_Program_Flyer_UPDATED.pdf>

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