Inter-Korean Relations and the End of Peaceful Reunification: A Social Conflict Approach

Wednesday June 18th, 18:00 c.t., Wilhelmstraße 133 , Room 30

Kevin Gray is a Professor in International Relations at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. His research expertise relates to the political economy of East Asian development. He is co-author (with Jong-Woon Lee) of North Korea and the Geopolitics of Development (Cambridge University Press, 2021), as well as author of Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation (Routledge, 2008), Labour and Development in East Asia: Social Forces and Passive Revolution (Routledge, 2015).

In late 2023, Kim Jong Un announced that North Korea would abandon its longstanding policy of peaceful reunification with the South and would no longer regard the southern half of the peninsula as within the territorial boundaries of its own state. In South Korea too, peaceful unification has become an increasingly contentious as the emergence of a new specifically South Korean rather than pan-Korean nationalism has emerged. In this paper, I critically engage with constructivists accounts of inter-Korean relations that seek to explain outcomes through the causative role of divergent national identities. Deploying a social conflict analysis approach, I argue that national identities should be understood in terms of competing hegemonic projects and thus subject to contestation.

From Folk Tradition to Cultural Heritage: The Case of Pansori

Wednesday June 4th, 18:00 c.t., Wilhelmstraße 133 , Room 30

Dr. Su Young Joo is Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at Aix-Marseille University. She is also a member of the Institute of Asian Studies (IrAsia – UMR 7306), a research unit affiliated with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her research focuses on Korean traditional performing arts and their transformation through institutionalization, patrimonialization, and digital mediation. She received her Ph.D. in History from Aix-Marseille University in 2021, with a dissertation on the evolution of Pansori from its shamanic origins to its recognition as national heritage. Dr. Joo has widely published and presented on Korean cultural heritage, oral traditions, and Korean language didactics, both in France and internationally.

Pansori is a unique Korean vocal art, both ancient and still alive today. More than just an artistic performance, it is a collective expression that carries memory, culture, and a worldview shaped in part by Confucian values. In this presentation, we looked not only at the aesthetics of pansori, but also at its historical trajectory — how a popular, orally transmitted art form rooted in everyday life has been transformed into an officially recognized cultural heritage. This process of patrimonialization, closely tied to institutionalization, has significantly changed the nature of the art. Pansori is no longer only a lived and spontaneous experience; it is now preserved, exhibited, and sometimes even fixed. Cultural heritage is not something that exists naturally — it is the result of collective and political choices. A practice is considered worthy of preservation when a society chooses to give it that status. In this way, pansori has become a constructed cultural asset, situated at the crossroads of memory, Korean identity, and institutional recognition.

Reading and Discussion

Seoul, 1992 — a massive skyscraper collapses, shattering the seemingly stable world of Sae, a young mother, former journalist, and student activist. In Excavations (2023), Hannah Michell’s American debut novel, protagonist Sae embarks on a personal quest for truth as she searches for her missing husband, leading readers through the complex history of contemporary South Korea.

The Center for Korean Studies cordially invites you to join the reading and discussion with Korean British author Hannah Michell.

Moderation: Birgit Geipel | Center for Korean Studies

Date and Time: May 28^th, 2025 | 6 pm c.t.

Venue: Großer Senat | Neue Aula, Universität Tübingen

2030 Women in South Korea 'Into the New World'? Reading the Generational and Periodic Context through the Lens of Feminism

Wednesday May 21st, 18:00 c.t., Wilhelmstraße 133 , Room 30

Dr. Hye-min Oh is a feminist scholar, writer, retired filmmaker, and educator. She holds a PhD in Women's Studies from Ewha Women's University in Seoul and an MA in Gender and Diversity from the Freie Universität Berlin. As a part of the Global Encounters Fellowship at the University of Tübingen, she is currently researching responses to the alt-right politics from a transnational perspective, with a particular focus on resilience and institutionalisation. Her dissertation, entitled 'Epistemic Vulnerability of Korean Budding Feminists in the Era of Post-Feminism Reboot.' focused on the contemporary and generational context, examining the impact of feminism and anti-feminism backlash on the younger generation. Following the emergence of the #MeToo movement in the arts sector, she has taught mandatory feminist courses at the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul for six years. In an educational environment characterised by both acceptance and resistance, she cultivated her interest in feminist pedagogy. She has participated in numerous educational content development projects and published academic papers and books.

This lecture examines the generational and cyclical context of women in their 20s and 30s, who are newly recognized as key actors in the 2024 impeachment rallies. What generational characteristics have been shaped by growing up with the feminism reboot - the popularisation of feminism - and #SchoolMeToo? How did they realise their place in the social structure, when it was widely believed that everything they achieved depended on their hard work? How has society scrutinised their stories and what setbacks and challenges have they faced?

About some of the characteristics of Korean that Korean learners should know

Wednesday May 14th, 18:00 c.t., Wilhelmstraße 133 , Room 30

Kim Huntae is a Visiting Professor at the University of Latvia, where he has been teaching and conducting research in Korean Studies since 2019, supported by the Korea Foundation. Prior to this, he held several academic positions at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, including Expert and Cooperation Researcher under the Seed Grant program funded by the Academy of Korean Studies, as well as Visiting Professor through both the Korea Foundation and the Academy.

Korean is currently spoken as a native language by more than 80 million people. In recent years, the Korean Wave (Hallyu), which began in earnest in the 2010s, has gradually raised the international profile of the Korean language, with more people studying and using it as a second or third language in many countries around the world. The role of Korean is becoming more diverse, not only in terms of increasing interest in Korean culture, but also in terms of professional needs and personal life. In particular, I believe that in the future, many students will be interested in teaching Korean as well as translating or interpreting Korean abroad. Korean has a wide variety of features compared to Western languages, so it is very important for students studying Korean to systematically learn various Korean features. In this lecture, I would like to introduce the features of Korean language roughly into general features, phonological features, lexical features, and grammatical features. In particular, among the lexical features, I would like to present the various meanings and functions of Korean vocabulary, focusing on onomatopoeia, mimic words, colour words, and taste words.

The geography of rail transport in the early 20th century Korea

Wednesday May 7th, 18:00 c.t., Wilhelmstraße 133 , Room 30

Wookung Huh, 허우긍, is emeritus professor of geography at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. He studied geography at Seoul National University (B.A. and M.A.), and at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA (Ph.D.). His research interest includes geographies of transportation and communication; old maps; and geographic visualization. He served the Korean Geographical Society, as the Vice President (1997-1998) and President (1999-2000).

A rail line between Seoul and Incheon, the outer port of the capital city, was opened in 1899 for the first time ever in the Korean Peninsula. Afterwards a rail network was rapidly expanded throughout the Peninsula by Japan, up until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. This study examines the geographic nature of such Japan-built rail network, the characters of individual line segments of the network, and passenger and freight flows on the network. The study goes on to explore how much the contemporary rail system of S.Korea is indebted to the old-day rail network; how much the old and new rail systems are different from each other in their nature; and in what ways the Japan-built network has intervened the urban system of the country and the emergence of national corridors.

Between Cooperation and Conflict: German Business in Cold War Korea

Wednesday April 30th, 18:00 c.t., Wilhelmstraße 133 , Room 30

Thomas Eichert is a research associate and PhD candidate at the Department of Korean Studies at University of Tübingen. He submitted a thesis on the history of West German business in South Korea. He holds Master’s Degrees from the University of Tübingen and Seoul National University. His research interests include the economic and business history of South Korea, German-Korean relations and history of science and technology.

In South Korea in the 1950s and 1960s, there were several risks that were supposed to prevent German companies from taking an interest in the Korean market. The risks could be categorized as political, social and economic. The political risks included domestic political instability and the ever-present threat from North Korea. The economic risks were related to the domestic market, which was too small and unpredictable, and the strong economic ties to the United States. Despite these circumstances, there were a handful of companies (especially the large German chemical and pharmaceutical companies) that became active in Korea starting in the 1950s. German companies had also a second way of entering the Korean market using governmental financial aid projects. This talk examines the cooperation and conflicts between German and Korean companies within the Cold War context. The second focus of the talk includes the roles of the respective governments on the German-Korean business cooperations. The main questions that this talk will answer are: What were the motivations of the companies to cooperate and how were the cooperations established? What of the aforementioned political and economic risks did the companies face and how were the risks mitigated?

[Poster: PDF download]