The British Association of Korean Studies (BAKS) is organising an upcoming lecture series this autumn with Professor Suk-Young Kim of University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA).
Professor Kim will be giving a series of lectures that builds from her published works. Such books include the recently published, Millennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024); Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix and Global Streaming Wars (Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2023); K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018); and DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
Schedule
The schedule for her UK Lecture Series and details below:
SOAS
‘Risky Networks: Subverting Block Chain Technology and Intellectual Property in Millennial North Korea’
Friday, 1 November 2024 at 17:00 to 18:30
Room RG01, SOAS main building
Registration Link
University of Sheffield
‘Surviving Squid Game: Designing the Maze of Psychological Terror’
Monday, 4 November 2024 at 15:30 to 17:00
Council Room, Firth Court, University of Sheffield Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
Registration Link
UCLAN
‘Beauty and the Waste: Fashioning Idols and the Ethics of Recycling in Korean Pop Music Videos’
Wednesday, 6 November 2024 at 14:00 to 16:00
ABLT4 (Adelphi Building), 40 Adelphi St, Preston PR1 7BJ
BAKS Members must register by contacting: [email protected]
*Due to health and safety reasons, BAKS members must email in advance to join
University of Edinburgh
‘Risky Networks: Subverting Block Chain Technology and Intellectual Property in Millennial North Korea’
Thursday, 7 November 2024 at 16:30 to 18:00
50 George Square, Edinburgh; 1.06 Project Room
No registration required
About the speaker
Professor Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar with doctoral degrees in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama (Northwestern University, 2005) and Slavic Language and Literature (Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, 2001). Her work primarily focuses on body politics, transmedia, entertainment industry, and the historical roots of today’s popular culture. She finds writing inspirations in odd anachronisms and illuminating beauty found in dusty archives, live stages, and today’s vertiginous screen cultures. She currently serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and External Engagement; and is the Head of the Theater and Performance Studies programme at UCLA.
Her writings have appeared in English, Korean, Russian, Polish, and German languages while her scholarship has been recognized by the International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholars Prize, the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship, James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, the Association for Theater in Higher Education Outstanding Book Award, ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship, and the Academy of Korean Studies grants among others. She was a visiting professor at Yonsei University, University of Bologna, and Arizona State University. She is a member of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and co-edits the Columbia University Press’ new book series Critical Voices from East Asia. Her commentary on Korean politics and media has been featured in major media outlets, such as Billboard, NPR, NYT, WSJ, CNN and her opinion pieces have been published by the Los Angeles Times and NBC. In 2023, she was invited to serve as a judge for the MNET Asian Music Awards. Professor Kim previously taught at Dartmouth College and UC Santa Barbara.
Abstracts for Lectures
Risky Networks: Subverting Block Chain Technology and Intellectual Property in Millennial North Korea
We live in a hyper-networked world where joining online platforms and entering digital transactions play a pivotal role in spinning unique dynamics of today’s sociality. But what if our digital interface with the world is limited to few state-sanctioned platforms? What if the most significant transactions we make must take place offline, not online? This talk explores the unique case of millennial North Korea where the state is anxiously trying to catch up with the world standard of communication technology while also faced with the need to block free influx of outside information. In a country where smuggling foreign media still can be punished by public execution, how do North Koreans manage to access outside information? This presentation explores the way in which the expansion of new media technology complicates North Korea’s seemingly monolithic facade mired in entangled networks of technology and surveillance, intellectual property and copyrights, and the way millennials live with censorship and surveillance.
Beauty and the Waste: Fashioning Idols and the Ethics of Recycling in Korean Pop Music Videos
The Korean pop music (K-Pop) scene in recent years has become a fashion powerhouse where its highly visible starts exert tremendour influence on their fans’ fashion practices. As K-Pop content is most frequently consumers on YouTube, K-Pop music videos have come to be cybernetic runway shows, whetting the fans’ appetite for endless fashion consumption. This talk examines K-Pop’s double entendre as both a seminal player in and a critic of the fash-ion industry by comparing two highly influential music videos – G-Dragon’s “Crooked” (2013) and BTS’s “Spring Day” (2017) – that allegorically comment on the contemporary fashion practices of quick accumulation and disposal. Arguably the most successful artists in the genre’s history, both G-Dragon and the seven-member BTS exert huge influence on youth culture not just in Asia but far beyond. The talk will touch upon broader calamities generated by environmental crisis and highlight the struggles of millennials around the globe who are subject to the neoliberal ethos of ruthless self-promotion, often in the form of self-fashioning practices.
Surviving Squid Game: Designing the Maze of Psychological Terror
Squid Game swept the pandemic-jaded world by storm upon its release and has become the first Asian-language drama to top Netflix’s global ranking. Its gory yet moving dramatic metaverse set social media platforms on fire, with its genre-bending story about desperate contestants playing a series of deadly “winner-take-it-all” children’s games for a multimillion dollar cash prize. This talk explores Squid Game’s phantasmagoric set and costume design as a crucial part of visual storytelling. Straddling the contrasting images of a childhood dreamland and a hyperreal slaughterhouse, the visual design of the show constantly crosses the line between the vital and the morbid, making viewers feel unsettled as they become immersed in a hauntingly beautiful yet nightmarish set. The production team’s partnership with Netflix allowed for an enhanced budget and creative freedom to construct the memorable visual sets indispensable for viral storytelling, and at the same time, Netflix’s monopoly of IP presents a unique challenge for the Korean media industry to enter the global streaming war as a fully empowered player.