Professor Fujitani’s presentation will be drawn from his forthcoming book, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans in WWII. The book is a comparative and transnational study of ethnic and colonial soldiers during the Asia-Pacific War (or the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific) that focuses specifically on Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States army and Koreans who were recruited or drafted into the Japanese military. His research utilizes the two sites of soldiering as optics through which to examine the larger operations and structures of the changing U.S. and Japanese national empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations within the larger demands of conducting total war. He seeks to show how discussions about, policies, and representations of these two sets of soldiers tell us a great deal about the changing characteristics of wartime racism, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, gender politics, the family, and some other related issues on both sides of the Pacific that go well beyond the soldiers themselves, and whose repercussions remain with us today. The seminar will focus on the Korean Japanese side of his research.

Takashi Fujitani is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. His primary areas of research are modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia-Pacific). His publications include: Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (UC Press, 1996; Japanese version, 1994; Korean translation, 2003);  Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (co-editor, Duke, 2001); and  Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans in WWII (forthcoming, UC Press; Japanese version, Iwanami Shoten); as well as numerous book chapters and articles published in Korean, Japanese and English. His recent research has been funded by the John. S. Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Social Science Research Council.

This seminar is supported by a generous grant from Koret Foundation.

As one of the core features of modern states, universal schooling provided a tool with which to disseminate the skills and knowledge demanded by the new era of industrialization and interstate competition, as well as to impart what it meant to be a citizen. Citizenship education, in fact, or "civics," lay at the heart of the education enterprise in the modern world, reflecting the new circumstances of competing nation-states and hence prioritizing the cultivation of the population’s identification with and allegiance to a particular nation and/or the state.  An education system, then, came to be regarded as a strategic necessity if not entirely an idealistic or humanitarian one. 

This presentation explores modern Korean state making through an examination of citizen education at the turn of the 20th century.  How did the larger purpose of universal schooling and citizenship education evolve as the Korean state underwent so many dramatic shifts in form, function, and even sovereignty?  What role did the educational institutions, from the state bureaucracy to the schools themselves, play in spreading the lessons of loyalty, allegiance, and identity?  And finally, How did Confucian ethics and statecraft affect the demands of the modern schooling system?  Indeed the legacies of pre-20th century Korea extended well into the colonial era (1910-45), including the period of wartime mobilization in the 1930s and 40s, when schooling became central to the intensified, radical assimilation policy of turning Koreans into "imperial subjects."

Professor Hwang conducts research on the modern transformation of Korea, broadly conceived.  He is the author of Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea (2004), and co-edited, with Professor Gi-Wook Shin of Stanford, Contentious Kwangju:  The May 1980 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present (2003).  His latest book, History of Korea: An Episodic Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan) is expected to be published in 2010.  He teaches courses on Korean history and society, East Asian and world history at the University of Southern California.  He is a graduate of Oberlin College (AB) and Harvard University (Ph.D).

This seminar is supported by a generous grant from Koret Foundation.

Can anyone say that South Korean society and politics have become "transformed" since the 1987 democratic opening and transition? This statement is "admittedly ambitious" as a claim "because an endpoint of transformation can never be attained with certainty," the speaker argues.  After a successful democratic transition, South Korea’s next challenge lies in consolidating its democratic gains and building durable political institutions, requiring full compliance with democratic norms by all major political forces and interest groups in civil society. This on-going quest for liberal democracy, not easy for South Korea’s Sixth Republic, will be explored in Professor Kihl's presentation.

Young Whan Kihl is currently a visiting scholar in the Korean Studies Program at APARC. He is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at Iowa State University. Professor Kihl taught courses on International Relations, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Behavior, and Comparative Foreign Policy at Iowa State University, 1974-2006, and served as Chair of the Department of Political Science, Juniata College, 1963-1974.  He was editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Korean Studies from 2004 to 2008 and was on the editorial advisory board of International Studies Quarterly from 1998 to 2004.  He has written numerous books on Korean politics, both North and South. Included in the list of his recent books are: North Korea: the Politics of Regime Survival, 2006 (coeditor) and Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture, 2005.

Professor Kihl received a BA in Political Science and Economics from Grinnell College and a Ph.D. in International Politics and Organizations, Comparative Politics (Asia), and Political Behavior from New York University.

The exploration of visual archives related to Korean history has grown at an exponential rate over the past decade.  While photographs ostensibly hold the possibility of tranforming the captured ephemeral moments into the fixity of celluloid perpetuity, they can have profound effects on changing memories of the past, and collapsing time and space.  This lecture examines the history and the meanings of photography in modern Korean history through the two dual prisms of "wormholes" and "phantom zones."

Lynn is the AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia.  He is also the editor for the journal Pacific Affairs which has been published continuously since 1928.  His research covers a range of topics relating to modern and contemporary Korea (both South and North), and Japan.  His publications include Bipolar Orders: The Two Koreas Since 1989 (2007); "History of Gendered Migration in the Two Koreas," Harvard Asia Quarterly (2008); "Moving Pictures: Postcards of Colonial Korea," International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter (2007); and "Vicarious Traumas: Television and Public Opinion in Japan's North Korea Policy," Pacific Affairs (2006).

Lynn received a B.A and an M.A from University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Since President Lee Myung-bak introduced the "Green Growth" policy in 2008, Korea has actively advocated it in every aspect of the society as a new engine of growth. The Presidential Committee on Green Growth was created as a control tower of the policy developments and green industries were identified, and along the same line of efforts, the Basic Law on Green Growth was enacted.  Korea, among the developing countries under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was the first to volunteer to reduce emissions by 30 percent of anticipated BAU by 2020.  It also initiated the East Asia Climate Partnership through which 200 million USD was pledged to assist developing countries in the region to cope with climate change.  The Lee administration has revealed its ambitious plans to launch Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) next year, which is presumed to play a catalyst role in inducing a low carbon economy.  Furthermore, it is expected that Korea, as Chair of the G20 in 2010, will aggressively promote green finance and green technology.

Suh Yong Chung is Associate Professor in the Division of International Studies at Korea University and is an international expert on sustainable development law and policy. His research covers various emerging issues in the environment and sustainable development such as climate change, marine environment, and biodiversity both at global and regional level. His most recent works focus on internationalization of Green Growth policy, post-2010 climate change regime formation, and regional environmental institution building in Northeast Asia.  He is a member of the Compliance Committee of the UN Basel Convention, and has participated in various activities of international organizations including the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), UNDP/GEF Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem Project, UNEP’s Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP), and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (UNESCAP). He has also advised on international law and policy issues in Korea for the Presidential Committee on Green Growth, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Ministry of Environment and the Organizing Committee of the 2012 Yeosu EXPO.
 
Suh Yong Chung holds degrees in law and international relations from Seoul National University, the London School of Economics and Stanford Law School. He was a researcher at Shorenstein APARC and has continuously been involved in its activities as the Secretary General of the Stanford APARC Forum in Korea.