The Korea Now Podcast #83 (Literature Series) – Immanuel Kim – ‘Friend - A Novel from North Korea’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Immanuel Kim. They speak about his translation and analysis of Nam-Nyong Paek’s Friend, the context in which the novel was first published in North Korea, the change that literature like this was trying to make away from the Socialist Realist tradition, the new subtleties and styles that this new wave of writing embodied, the important ways that the everyday was portrayed in the novel, the undercurrent of moral philosophy, the propaganda still present despite the understated nature of the work, how the novel is received by foreign audiences compared to North Korean audiences, and importantly a deep look at the structure, prose and composition of Friend in terms of its literary merit.

Immanuel Kim is Korea Foundation and Kim-Renaud Associate Professor of Korean Literature and Culture Studies. Prior to working at the George Washington University, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University (SUNY). Immanuel is a specialist in North Korean literature and cinema. His research focuses on the changes and development, particularly in the representations of women, sexuality, and memory, of North Korean literature from the 1960s to present day. His book Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction explores the complex and dynamic literary culture that has deeply impacted the society. His second book called Laughing North Koreans: Culture of the Film Industry is on North Korean comedy films and the ways in which humour has been an integral component of the everyday life. By exploring comedy films and comedians, Immanuel looks past the ostensible propaganda and examines the agency of laughter.

*** Immanuel Kim’s translation of Nam-Nyong Paek’s ‘Friend : A Novel from North Korea’ (https://www.bookdepository.com/Friend-Nam-Nyong-Paek/9780231195614?ref=grid-view&qid=1595759881612&sr=1-1).

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The Korea Now Podcast #82 (Literature Series) – Jerome de Wit – ‘Writing during the Korean War, North and South’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Jerome de Wit. They speak about literature during the Korean War period, the writers that worked on both sides of the battlelines, the formation of war ideology, the institutionalisation of the process, the motivations for writing during the war, the issues and challenges involved in trying to find the appropriate message, the ability of this literature to capture emotions and rouse the reader to action, the nationalism and national identity that emerged/was built-up at this time, the dilemmas that concepts such as Minjok produced for considerations of post-war Korea, the way enemies and foreign powers were represented during the war, the gendered construction of womanhood, and important aspects of this literature and ideology that have maintained post-war and in some cases still continue today.

Jerome de Wit is a Junior Professor at the University of Tübingen, at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies in the Department of Korean Studies. Jerome de Wit received his Ph.D. from Leiden University, Netherlands. He is a Korean specialist on North and South Korean Wartime Literature and modern Korean culture. He is the author of articles that have appeared in the Memory Studies Journal and in several Korean journals. He has been a Research Fellow at both the Asiatic Research Institute (Korea University, 2012) as well as the Kyujanggak (Seoul National University, 2014). He is also co-organizer of the Korean Studies Graduate Students Convention in Europe. His research interest in Korean culture is focused on public discourses concerning history and society and how cultural sources can provide us with different viewpoints on debates such as nationalism, identity, and history.

*** Jerome de Wit’s dissertation: ‘Writing under wartime conditions: North and South Korean writers during the Korean War (1950-1953)’ (https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/31445/Writing%20under%20Wartime%20Conditions%20Jerome%20de%20WitNIEUW.pdf?sequence=3).

*** Jerome de Wit’s forthcoming book: ‘Literature and Cultural Identity during the Korean War: Comparing North and South Korean Writing’ (https://www.bookdepository.com/Literature-Cultural-Identity-during-Korean-War-Mr-Jerome-de-Wit/9781350106529).

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The Korea Now Podcast #81 (Literature Series) – Janet Poole – ‘Literature in Late Colonial Korea’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Janet Poole. They speak about Korean literature in the late-colonial period, the unique group of writers that emerged at this time, how they dealt with both censorship and the feeling of inevitability about Japanese rule, what the stories of this period looked like and the themes that tended to emerge, the depictions of the future and the everyday, the place of modernity and nostalgia, what Korean identity looked like and how it was developed through literature, the impact that this period had on Korean nationalism and Korean literature, and a deep look at specific late-colonial writers and their work.

Janet Poole is an Associate Professor and Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests lie in aesthetics in the broad context of colonialism and modernity, in history and theories of translation, and in the creative practice of literary translation. Janet’s book, When the Future Disappears: The Modernist Imagination in Late Colonial Korea, writes the creative works of Korea’s writers into the history of global modernism, and colonialism into the history of fascism, through an exploration of the writings of poets, essay writers, fiction writers and philosophers from the final years of the Japanese empire. It won the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize (2015) and Honorable Mention for the Association of Asian Studies James B. Palais Prize (2016).

Janet is also a translator of the mid-century writer Yi T’aejun and has published a collection of his best short fiction from 1925 through 1950, by which time he had moved to North Korea (Dust and Other Stories, Columbia University Press); and a collection of his anecdotal essays originally published during the Asia-Pacific War (Eastern Sentiments, Columbia University Press, paperback edition, 2013), which offers a quirky take on everyday life in 1930s Korea: wistful, nostalgic and violently colonial.

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The Korea Now Podcast #80 (Literature Series) – Ross King – ‘Korean-to-English Literary Translation - A Critical Examination’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Ross King. They speak about the landscape of Korean-to-English literary translation, the rise in interest over the past few years and support for the practice, how such translation can be taught and the challenges that exist within the field, the organisations that support and fund this translation, the bureaucratic and underlying assumptions behind this funding and support, the misplaced resistance against people studying Korean literature outside of Korea as well as the bias towards outbound translation, the structures and attitudes that are holding back the achievement of wider spread and more impressive Korean-to-English literary translation, and importantly Ross’s personal experiences working and teaching within this area of study.

Ross King is a Professor of Korean language and literature at the University of British Columbia, as well as the Head of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He completed his B.A. in Linguistics at Yale and his doctorate in Linguistics (Korean) at Harvard. Ross taught Korean language and linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, from 1990 to 1994, before accepting his current position. Ross's research interests range from Korean historical grammar, dialectology and pedagogy to the language, culture and history of the ethnic Korean minority in the former Soviet Union. He also serves as Dean of the Korean Language Village at Concordia Language Villages, a Korean language and culture summer immersion program for young people ages 7 to 18 that is based in northern Minnesota. Pertinent to this podcast, Ross is the author of ‘Infected Korean Language, Purity Verses Hybridity’ (https://www.academia.edu/37363111/INFECTED_KOREAN_LANGUAGE_PURITY_VERSUS_HYBRIDITY), and ‘Can Korean-to-English Literary Translation be Taught? Some Recommendations for Korean Funding Agencies’ (https://www.academia.edu/3358674/Can_Korean-to-English_literary_translation_be_taught_Some_recommendations_for_Korean_funding_agencies).

*** Ross King’s academic publications can be found at: https://ubc.academia.edu/RossKing

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The Korea Now Podcast #79 (Literature Series) – Ayse Naz Bulamur – ‘Love as a Contact Zone - Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Ayse Naz Bulamur. They speak about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, the different analytical interpretations of the novel, the importance of the text and how people have come to understand it over time, the role that emotion plays in building the characters, the blend between prose, poetry, autobiography, historical text, and story-telling, the experimental nature of the novel, the way that time plays out – both connecting and separating characters, the distance that emerges between the Korean mother and her Korean-American daughter, and importantly how love becomes a ‘contact zone’ for the female characters across time and space.

Ayse Naz Bulamur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Boaziçi University, Istanbul. She received her PhD in Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of How Istanbul's Cultural Complexities Have Shaped Eight Contemporary Novelists: Tales of Istanbul in Contemporary Fiction, and Victorian Murderesses: The Politics of Female Violence. She has written articles on the works of British, American, and Turkish female writers from the early seventeenth century to the present, including articles on Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam, A. S. Byatt's The Djinn in the Nightingales Eye, and Elif Safak's The Bastard of Istanbul. Her research focuses on postcolonial theory, urban theory, feminist criticism, and nineteenth-century and contemporary fiction. And pertinent to this podcast she is the author of: ‘Love as a Contact Zone in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982)’ (https://sjeas.skku.edu/upload/201410/4.%20Ayse%20Naz%20BULAMUR%20for%20homepage.pdf).

*** Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (https://www.amazon.com/Dictee-Theresa-Hak-Kyung-Cha/dp/0520261291).

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The Korea Now Podcast #78 (Literature Series) – Minsoo Kang – ‘The Story of Hong Gildong’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Minsoo Kang. They speak about The Story of Hong Gildong, the importance of this story in both Korean history and continuing into the present day, the origins of the Hong Gildong character in the Joseon Dynasty, the understanding of this character as a ‘noble robber’ in the same archetype as Robin Hood, the historical myths and scholarly inaccuracies that have changed most peoples’ conceptions of the text, the difficulty in translating the story from the 34 extant versions that survive today, the pseudo-history that has built up around both the story and the figure of Hong Gildong, how we should view the story now and its place in modern Korean society, and why The Story of Hong Gildong remains such an important achievement in Korean literature.

Minsoo Kang is an associate professor in European history, with specialities in the cultural and intellectual history of France, England, and Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He received his Ph.D. in June of 2004 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he wrote his dissertation on the automaton as a cultural and intellectual symbol in the European imagination. In addition to articles in numerous journals he is the author of ‘Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination’ (Harvard University Press, 2010) and co-editor of ‘Visions of the Industrial Age, 1830 - 1914: Modernity and the Anxiety of Representation in Europe’. And pertinent to this podcast, he is also the author of ‘The Story of Hong Gildong’ (Penguin Classics) (https://www.bookdepository.com/Story-Hong-Gildong-Minsoo-Kang/9780143107699?ref=grid-view&qid=1592728297640&sr=1-1), and ‘Invincible and Righteous Outlaw: The Korean Hero Hong Gildong in Literature, History, and Culture’ (https://www.bookdepository.com/Invincible-Righteous-Outlaw-Minsoo-Kang/9780824884314?ref=grid-view&qid=1592728324023&sr=1-5).

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The Korea Now Podcast #77 – Ben Young – ‘The 1976 DMZ Axe Murder Incident - Emotion, Anger and Fear in American-North Korean Relations’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Ben Young. They speak about the 1976 Axe Murder Incident inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the geopolitical context in which this happened, the history of conflict between America and North Korea, the 1968 capture of the USS Pueblo, how the cutting down of a tree inside the Joint Security Area (JSA) sparked the murders, the crisis that this created on both sides of the border, the very real risk at the time of this developing into nuclear war, the subsequent deployment of Operation Paul Bunyan to finally remove the tree, the important role that emotions played in this incident as well as the responses from both sides, the similarities with the 1994 nuclear crisis, how emotional politics and decision-making still affects the relationship between the two countries, and how all of this manifests in the figure of Donald Trump and his Presidency.

Benjamin R. Young is an Assistant Professor at Dakota State University, was recently a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S Naval War College, as well as a CSIS NextGen Korea Scholar. Ben achieved his PhD in Asian history at George Washington University, with a dissertation focussed on North Korea’s global outreach and international diplomacy during the Cold War. He has been a Fulbright junior researcher in Seoul, South Korea, and his work has been published in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters, and NKnews. His book, due out next year (2021) with Stanford University Press is titled: Guns, Guerillas & the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World. Pertinent to this podcast, Ben is also the author of: Fire and Fury: The Role of Anger and Fear in U.S.–North Korea Relations, 1968–1994 (https://www.academia.edu/43218713/Before_Fire_and_Fury_The_Role_of_Anger_and_Fear_in_U.S._North_Korea_Relations_1968_1994_The_Korean_Journal_of_Defense_Analysis_Vol._32_No._2_June_2020_207-229_).

*** The link to the previous podcast with Ben Young on North Korea’s Cold War alliances and outreach to the third world is available here: https://korea-now-podcast.libsyn.com/the-korea-now-podcast-10-ben-young-friends-in-strange-places-cold-war-allies).

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The Korea Now Podcast #76 – Jay Song – ‘North Korean Defector Activists’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Jay Song. They speak about the North Korean defector community, the importance of their voices and activism in applying pressure to the regime in Pyongyang over the country’s human rights violations, how defector-activists form networks, the different niches that they create, the transnational dimensions of these networks, the co-evolution that happens between defectors and NGO’s etc., the North Korean voices that are missing from these mainstream narratives, how defectors are treated by the international community, the risk of manipulation by international-activist communities, and whether some defectors have used their human rights testimony to their own advantage. This discussion will focus on five prominent defector-activists: Kang Chol Hwan, Shin Dong Hyuk, Kim Joo Il, Park Yeon Mi and Park Ji Hyun.

*** Correction: at one point during this interview Jay refers to the number of North Korean defectors in South Korea as 35,000. She would like to correct this to 33,000.

Jay (Jiyoung) Song is a Senior Lecturer in Korean studies at the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne and Global Ethics Fellow of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. Prior to her current positions, Jay was the Director of Migration and Border Policy Project at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Singapore Management University, Fellow/Lecturer at the National University of Singapore, Associate Fellow of Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs, London), UN Consultant for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Geneva), and Post-doc Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society of the University of Oxford . She holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies (Cambridge, UK), LLM in Human Rights (Hong Kong), and BS in Mathematics (Seoul, Korea).

You can follow Jay’s work at https://songjiyoung.wordpress.com/ and pertinent to this podcast she is the author of North Korean secondary asylum in the UK (https://www.academia.edu/36416590/North_Korean_secondary_asylum_in_the_UK), Co-evolution of networks and discourses: a case from North Korean defector-activists (https://www.academia.edu/36415142/Australian_Journal_of_International_Affairs_Co-evolution_of_networks_and_discourses_a_case_from_North_Korean_defector-activists_Jiyoung_Song), The Emergence of Five North Korean Defector-Activists in Transnational Activism (https://www.academia.edu/38027490/The_Emergence_of_Five_North_Korean_Defector-Activists_in_Transnational_Activism).

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The Korea Now Podcast #75 – Stephen Nagy – ‘Coronavirus and East Asia - Investigations, Coercion and Middle Power Alliances’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Stephen Nagy. They speak about the impact of coronavirus on East Asia, how the crisis has affected relationships in the region, the opportunities that it originally presented for deeper cooperation, the failure of leadership from Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, how Japan are dealing with the crisis, the substantive links between China’s response to the current moment and that with recent challenges in Hong Kong and the arrest of a Huawei executive in Canada, the institutional problems inside China that are being exposed, the impact on global trade and regional economies, the need for an independent investigation into China’s original handling of the outbreak, the economic coercion that China are using to discourage such an investigation, and importantly the future of East Asia and the Asia Pacific as well as the prospects for the emergence of influential new middle power alliances.

Stephen Nagy is a Distinguished Fellow at Canada's Asia Pacific Foundation (APF), a Fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI), and an appointed China expert with Canada’s China Research Partnership. Stephen is currently a Senior Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the International Christian University, Tokyo. He was selected for the 2018 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) AILA Leadership Fellowship in Washington, and has published widely in both peer-reviewed journals and popular media. You can follow Stephen’s writing, and access the research sources for this podcast at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/stephen-r-nagy/, http://icu.academia.edu/StephenRobertNagy and http://stephenrobertnagy.academia.edu/

*** The link to the previous podcast with Stephen Nagy on regionalism and summit diplomacy is available here: https://korea-now-podcast.libsyn.com/the-korea-now-podcast-39-stephen-nagy-regionalism-failed-summits-and-the-view-from-japan

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The Korea Now Podcast #74 – Sandra Fahy – ‘Dying for Rights in North Korea, Part 2 - The Denials’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Sandra Fahy. They speak about the second half of Sandra’s new book ‘Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record’, the response from North Korea to significant human rights accusations such as with the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, how North Korean media reports and deals with accusations of this kind, the specific threat of defector testimony to the regime in Pyongyang and their efforts to discredit or silence the defector community, the language and rhetoric that they use, the current state and nature of human rights inside North Korea, and the hope for the future. This is the second of two podcasts on Sandra’s book, the first focussed on ‘The Crimes’.

Sandra Fahy completed her doctorate in Anthropology at the School for Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Sejong Society, the University of Southern California, and École des hautes études en sciences socials in Paris. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Sophia University in Tokyo. She is the author of ‘Marching through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea’ (2015); and ‘Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record’ (2019), both published with Columbia University Press.

* Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/dying-for-rights/9780231176347)

* Marching Through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/marching-through-suffering/9780231171342)

*** The podcast covering Sandra’s first book, ‘Marching through Suffering’, is available here: http://korea-now-podcast.libsyn.com/the-korea-now-podcast-20-sandra-fahy-the-language-of-suffering-life-and-struggle-during-the-north-korean-famine

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The Korea Now Podcast #73 – Sandra Fahy – ‘Dying for Rights in North Korea, Part 1 - The Crimes’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Sandra Fahy. They speak about the first half of Sandra’s new book ‘Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record’, the nature and scope of the human rights abuses in North Korea, the history of these violations, the impact and responsibility for famine and hunger, religious persecution across the country, the control of information, the control of movement and labour, the system of prison camps, torture and execution, and North Korea’s exportation of human rights violations. This is the first of two podcasts on Sandra’s book, the second will focus on ‘The Denials’.

Sandra Fahy completed her doctorate in Anthropology at the School for Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Sejong Society, the University of Southern California, and École des hautes études en sciences socials in Paris. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Sophia University in Tokyo. She is the author of ‘Marching through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea’ (2015); and ‘Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record’ (2019), both published with Columbia University Press.

* Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/dying-for-rights/9780231176347)

* Marching Through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/marching-through-suffering/9780231171342)

*** The podcast covering Sandra’s first book, ‘Marching through Suffering’, is available here: http://korea-now-podcast.libsyn.com/the-korea-now-podcast-20-sandra-fahy-the-language-of-suffering-life-and-struggle-during-the-north-korean-famine

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The Korea Now Podcast #72 – Donald Baker – ‘The Religious Landscape in South Korea’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Donald Baker. They speak about the history of religion on the Korean peninsula, the rise and place held by Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism, the arrival of first Catholicism and then Protestant Christianity, the ways in which Koreans tended to not associate themselves with specific religious identities during the Chosŏn Dynasty and into the Japanese colonial period, how religion emerged after the end of the Second World War, the transformative impact that Protestantism had on the religious landscape, how this new religiosity affected ideas of modernisation and democracy, the role that religion played in the Gwangju Uprising (including Don’s firsthand account of the massacre), how Korea’s religious scene can be best described as a marketplace, and the future of religion in Korea.

Donald Baker is a Professor in Korean History and Civilization at the University of British Columbia. He received his Ph.D. in Korean history from the University of Washington and has taught at UBC since 1987. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Korean history and thought (religion, philosophy, and pre-modern science). In addition, he teaches a graduate seminar on the reproduction of historical trauma in Asia, in which he leads graduate students in an examination of how traumatic events in Asia in the 20th century.

He was a co-editor of the Sourcebook of Korean Civilization and editor of Critical Readings on Korean Christianity.  He is also the author of Chosŏn hugi yugyo wa ch’ǒnjugyo ŭi taerip (The Confucian confrontation with Catholicism in the latter half of the Joseon dynasty) and Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press, 2008). In 2008, he was awarded the Tasan prize for his research on Tasan Chŏng Yagyong, a writer and philosopher in Korea in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 2013 he was been asked by the National Institute of Korean History to serve as the chairperson of the International Advisory Committee for the English Translation of the Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty.

Pertinent to this podcast Don is also the author of: ‘The Impact of Christianity on Modern Korea’ (https://www.academia.edu/26306252/THE_IMPACT_OF_CHRISTIANITY_ON_MODERN_KOREA_AN_OVERVIEW), ‘The Emergence of a Religious Market in Twentieth-century Korea’, (https://www.academia.edu/26306251/The_Religious_Market_In_Korea), and ‘The Transformation of Confucianism in 20th Century Korea’ (https://www.academia.edu/35433613/THE_TRANSFORMATION_OF_CONFUCIANISM_IN_20th_CENTURY_KOREA_-HOW_IT_HAS_LOST_MOST_OF_ITS_METAPHYSICAL_UNDERPINNINGS_AND_SURVIVES_TODAY_PRIMARILY_AS_ETHICAL_RHETORIC_AND_HERITAGE_RITUALS).

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The Korea Now Podcast #71 – Geoffrey Cain – ‘The Republic of Samsung’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Geoffrey Cain. They speak about the origins and foundation of Samsung, its expansion into becoming an international conglomerate, the dynastic planning and building of the ruling family into Korean aristocracy, the explicit patriotic ideology of the company, the alliances and close nit relationships with successive authoritarian and democratic governments, Samsung’s move into semiconductors and eventually the smartphone market, its battles with Sony and later Apple for global market shares, the near-religious corporate culture that exists within the company, the rigid and restrictive hierarchy, the 2015 scandal over mergers and share sales to secure the position of Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong (Jay Lee) as head of the company, the political scandal involving former-President Park Geun-hye and her friend Choi Soon-sil, and what the future looks like for Samsung and its place within the world of technological innovation.

Geoffrey Cain is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, commentator, anthropologist and scholar of East and Central Asia. A former correspondent at The Economist, Cain is a regular commentator in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Foreign Policy, The New Republic and The Nation, and a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, BBC and Bloomberg. Geoffrey is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project. His first book, Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech, from a decade of his coverage of the world’s largest technology conglomerate, was published in March 2020 by Currency at Penguin Random House.

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The Korea Now Podcast #70 – Nianshen Song – ‘Between Choson and Qing - Mt Paektu, the Tumen River, and “No Man’s Land”’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Nianshen Song. They speak about the history of the border region between Choson Korea and Qing China, how migrant flows into Manchuria began to raise concerns for these states, the issue of finding the Tumen river and accurately demarcating it, the challenges of cartography at this time, the importance that Imperial Japan saw in this issue, how questions of international law and historical territory played into the decision making, the nature of the relationship between Qing China and Choson Korea, the demarcation and growing importance of Mount Paektu, how these historical debates played out, how they were resolved, and their impact on the modern boundaries of China and (North) Korea.

Nianshen Song is an Assistant Professor of History and an affiliated faculty in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research and teaching focus on late imperial and modern China, with special interest in China’s ethnic frontiers, East Asian trans-regional networks, and international relations. He is the author of Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881–1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which explores the making of the China-Korean boundary and the Korean diaspora society in Northeast China. His articles appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, among others. His next book project, The West Pagoda:  Three and Half Centuries of a Chinese Neighborhood, aims to examine the rise and fall of Northeast China from the nearly 400 years’ evolution of a small urban space. You can follow Nianshen’s work at ‘https://history.umbc.edu/facultystaff/full-time/nianshen-song-2/’ and ‘https://umbc.academia.edu/NianshenSong’.

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The Korea Now Podcast #69 – Anders Riel Müller – ‘The Story of Korean Beef - Nationalism, Myth-Building and Anti-Americanism’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Anders Riel Müller. They speak about the history of beef and cattle on the Korean peninsula, the historical movements and invasions that impacted this diet, the change and re-emergence of the industry during the Japanese colonial period, the role that beef played as a part of the developmental state under successive authoritarian Korean leaders, the central importance of ‘the farmer’ during the democratic movement, the significance of Minjung philosophy, the impact of trade liberalisation, the rebellion against this, the nationalism that formed around the beef industry, and the anti-American protests that resulted in the early-late 2000s.

Anders Riel Müller currently works at the University of Stavanger as head of the Smart City Research Network. His main research interest is to understand how development imaginaries/Imaginaries of economic progress shape relations of production and consumption. He has worked mostly on Korean agro-food politics and economic nationalism, South Korean aid narratives and New Nordic Cuisine. Anders is currently doing research on the relations between South Korean agrarian landscape imaginaries and political power. Pertinent to this podcast, Anders is the author of ‘The making of a food security crisis: overseas agricultural investments and nationalism in South Korea’ (https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/publications/the-making-of-a-food-security-crisis-overseas-agricultural-invest), and his broader academic publications can be found at: https://stavanger.academia.edu/AndersRielMuller?swp=rr-ac-7374239, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anders_Mueller and https://www.uis.no/about-the-university/contact-us/employees/muller-anders-riel-article133279-11199.html

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The Korea Now Podcast #68 – Erwin Tan – ‘Researching North Korea – Source Triangulation Methodology’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Erwin Tan. They speak about how to conduct research in the social sciences, the difficulty of conducting research on North Korea, the sensitivity of data that comes from primary sources, the difficulty of separating facts from analysis, source triangulation as a research strategy, chronological triangulation, perspective-based triangulation, methodological triangulation, the limitations of source triangulation, and importantly advice and guidance for young scholars looking to study North Korea.

Erwin Tan is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in Seoul, Republic of Korea. His research interests include security dilemma theory, US-North Korean interaction, security and diplomacy in East Asia, and strategic culture. He was a Visiting POSCO Research Fellow at the East West Center in 2016. Erwin is the author of ‘The US Versus the North Korean Nuclear Threat: Mitigating the Nuclear Security Dilemma’ (https://www.amazon.com/Versus-North-Korean-Nuclear-Threat/dp/0415702771), and pertinent to this podcast he is also the author of ‘Source Triangulation as an Instrument of Research on North Korea’ (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26632421?seq=1).

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The Korea Now Podcast #67 – Kathryn Weathersby – ‘The 1988 Seoul Olympics - Terrorism, Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Kathryn Weathersby. They speak about the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games, its origins and the bidding process, its value as an economic showcase, hopes that the Games would help build diplomatic bridges to communist and non-aligned nations, North Korea’s response to the Games, the nature of the Cold War divide, the challenge for legitimacy on the Korean peninsula, North Korea’s resort to terrorism with the downing of Korean Air flight 858, Pyongyang’s hopes that this would cause a boycott of the Games, the international response, Nordpolitik and Seoul’s outreach to Moscow, Beijing and Budapest, the overwhelming success of the games, and its extraordinary impact on the Cold War dynamic.

Kathryn Weathersby is a Visiting Scholar at the US Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, and is a Fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Asia Studies (ICAS). Kathryn is also the Director for the Korea Initiative of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which focusses on analysing newly emerging historical documents on North Korea from its former communist allies. Kathryn’s previous appearance on this podcast can be found at: The Korea Now Podcast #17 – Kathryn Weathersby – ‘Dividing Korea - Politics, War and Fear’

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The Korea Now Podcast #66 – Brad Glosserman – ‘Peak Japan’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Brad Glosserman. They speak about Brad’s new book ‘Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions’, the history of Japan, the different rises and falls in Japanese ambitions and national trajectories, the unique moment that Japan found themselves in at the end of the Cold War, the economic stagnation that followed, the impact of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the political landscape inside Japan, the leadership dynamics that have played out over the years, Japan’s foreign policy and particularly how it relates to the rise of China, the 2011 triple crises of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown, the impact this had on Japanese ideas of national identity, Shinzo Abe’s return to power in 2012, and deep psychological questions about where Japan finds itself today, what its relative decline has meant, how young Japanese people see their country, and the realisation that Japan might have hit its peak and so is now in a phase of comfortable downsizing rather than an unhappy and uncontrollable collapse.

Brad Glosserman is both the Deputy Director of, and Visiting Professor at, the Tama University Center for Rule Making Strategies, as well as a Senior Advisor for the Pacific Forum. Brad was also the Executive Director of the Pacific Forum for 15 years, and is the author of ‘The Future of U.S.-Korea-Japan Relations: Balancing Values and Interests’, ‘The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States’ and most pertinent to this podcast ‘Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions’ (Amazon; Book Depository). Brad’s regular commentary and opinion pieces can be found at: http://cc.pacforum.org/author/brad_glosserman/ and https://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/int-brad_glosserman/

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The Korea Now Podcast #65 – Emma Campbell – ‘The New Nationalism of South Korea’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Emma Campbell. They speak about frameworks and methodologies for understanding national identity, the history of Korean nationalism, how it has developed overtime, the traditional idea – and importance – of an ethnic centric form of national identity, how polling data is now showing a shift in attitudes away from this framework, the increasing hesitation toward the prospects of reunification within South Korea, the rapidly changing South Korea that young people now find themselves in, the pride that is now felt with the modernity and cosmopolitanism of the country, how current debates about Korean nationalism are playing out, and importantly the rise of a “globalised cultural nationalism” and how it is replacing older ideas of national identity.

Emma Campbell is a Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. Previous roles include Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University’s Korea Institute and Adviser to Australia's Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Development. Emma previously worked with Médecins sans Frontières in Africa and the Middle East on various projects including HIV/TB, refugees, armed conflict and Ebola. She was also a Researcher at the North Korea Database Centre. Emma runs the website ‘NK Humanitarian’ (https://nkhumanitarian.wordpress.com/) and is the author of: ‘South Korea’s New Nationalism: The End of “One Korea”?’ (https://www.amazon.com/South-Koreas-New-Nationalism-Korea/dp/1626374201).

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The Korea Now Podcast #64 – Andrew Logie – ‘Korean Pseudo-history’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Andrew Logie. They speak about the epidemic of Korean pseudo-history, how Korean history has been co-opted to serve nationalistic purposes, the threat that this field of pseudo-history is presenting to real historians and efforts to construct an evidence-based history of Korea, the methods that pseudo-historians use to manipulate evidence and construct false narratives, specific instances of this relating to the history of Old Choson, the Three Kingdoms, and Tangun (Dangun), amongst others, and importantly, what the historical record actually indicates about such important moments in Korean history.

Andrew Logie is an Assistant Professor at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include popular and pseudo historiography pertaining to early Korea and northern East Asia, and comparative historiography. A graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki with a postdoctoral period spent at Leiden University. His doctoral thesis comprises a survey of popular Korean historiography from the 13th century to the present. You can follow Andrew’s research at: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/andrew-logie and pertinent to this podcast he is the author of: ‘Diagnosing and Debunking Korean Pseudohistory’ (https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/diagnosing-and-debunking-korean-pseudohistory), and ‘Coalescence of Dangun’ (https://www.academia.edu/35181865/Logie_2015_Coalescence_of_Dangun).

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