This year marks the 30th anniversary of Kim Dae Jung’s (1924-2009) residence at Cambridge. Kim, President of South Korea from 1998 to 2003, was notable for his policies of détente on the Korean peninsula for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. An icon of the Korean pro-democracy movement in the 1970s and 1980s, he also made great contributions to Korean creativity through his cultural policies which initiated the “Korean Wave.”
To commemorate Kim Dae Jung’s legacies in the cultural sphere, this symposium will bring together both practitioners and scholars of the Korean Wave. Presenters include:
- Kang Jegyu, film Director of Shiri (1999) and Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War (2004);
- Ra Jong-Yil, former Ambassador to the UK and Japan;
- Mark Morris, Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge;
- Hye-Kyung Lee, Professor of Cultural Policy at King’s College London.
The symposium is co-hosted by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, the Baikbong Research Institute, and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. Yoon Yeocheol, South Korean Ambassador to the UK, and Chung Sye-gyun, former Prime Minister of South Korea will offer opening remarks.
Kim Dae-jung received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his policy of engagement with North Korea which led to the historic summit between the two countries in that year. During his presidency from 1998 to 2003, Kim successfully shepherded South Korea’s economic recovery, brought in a new era of economic transparency and fostered a greater role for South Korea on the world stage, including jointly hosting the 2002 World Cup with Japan. Kim Dae-jung was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall from January to June 1993 and later, in 2001, was made Honorary Fellow of the College. He received an Honorary Degree from Cambridge in 2001. While at Clare Hall, he wrote a lot about Korean Reunification whilst examining Germany’s reunification and what one might learn from this.