In this talk, Peter Ward will present fresh research undertaken as part of a recent paper to be published by the Korean Development Institute (KDI) about the contrasting approaches that the North Korean regime is taking to consumption and distribution of foreign content compared to other markets in North Korea today. Utilizing a close reading … [Read More]
Venue: SOAS
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SOAS seminar: An Atomic Age Unleashed
This presentation explores the common culture of Cold War scientism and atomic developmentalism in early North and South Korea. While tens of thousands of Koreans were subject to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, early peninsular analysis of the bombings rarely grappled with the existence of these individuals. The general exclusion of colonial subjects … [Read More]
SOAS-OKCHF Workshop on Korean collections in UK institutions
Join us for this workshop hosted by the School of Arts at SOAS. Museum curators, librarians, and academics will share their expertise in managing and utilizing Korean objects in their collections in UK institutions. They will also discuss the collecting histories and practices that have formed and shaped these collections. This workshop is part of … [Read More]
Book Talk – Black Girl from Pyongyang
Join author Monica Macias as she explores extraordinary true story of a West African girl’s upbringing in North Korea under the guardianship of President Kim Il Sung in conversation with Jim Hoare. In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was sent from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea by her father, the … [Read More]
Cairo Declaration and Korean service in British army commemorated in SOAS conference
Hands up, anyone who had actually heard of the Cairo Declaration before this SOAS conference designed to mark its 80th anniversary? I certainly hadn’t. Winston Churchill was in Cairo with a contingent of over 100 diplomatic and administrative staff, in late November 1943, where along with Chang Kai-shek and President Roosevelt they were starting to … [Read More]
Korean Peninsula Peace Forum
Leading authorities from the academic and practitioner communities in the UK will discuss the current tense situation on the Korean peninsula and the prospects for the easing of tension and return to negotiations. Looking at the strategy of the Republic of Korea (ROK), the Forum will first consider the complementarity between goals of promoting human … [Read More]
Stories of Freedom: The stories and voices of North Korean refugees
The British Korean Society and SOAS host an event in which three North Korean refugees will share their experiences in North and South Korea through different voices. In addition, the Co-founder of Freedom Speakers International will share his experiences of meeting refugees living in South Korea. This will be a talk with a video presentation … [Read More]
Conference: The Korean Independence Movement and the United Kingdom
To commemorate the 140th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and the United Kingdom and the 80th anniversary of the Cairo Declaration, SOAS University of London and the National Memorial of the Korean Provisional Government are jointly holding this international academic conference. Scholars from Korea and the UK will gather to engage … [Read More]
Book talk: William Franklin Sands in Late Choson Korea – At the Deathbed of Empire, 1896-1904
William Franklin Sands was the highest-ranking foreign adviser in the Korean government in the twilight years of the Choson dynasty. His book, entitled Undiplomatic Memories, first published in 1930 and now nearly a century old, has been the seemingly definitive account of his life and career in Seoul. However, his Papers in the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary outside … [Read More]
Korea Update with the two ambassadors
Two British ambassadors will talk about their work, the UK’s current relations with the two Koreas, and current issues on the Peninsula. Colin Crooks became Ambassador to the Republic of Korea in 2022, having previously served as Ambassador in Pyongyang. He joined the FCO in 1992, and has had other postings to Beijing, Jakarta and … [Read More]
Histories of Philosophies in the Peripheries: The Case of Korea
There is still no standard work on the history of Korean philosophy in a Western language. Even in Korea, there is no general consensus on whether premodern intellectual traditions in Korea qualify for a history of philosophy: a well-known situation for us working in global or intercultural philosophy. However, a distinctive Korean interest in philosophical … [Read More]
Overcoming Barriers: Korea in Translation
Brother Anthony (who has been publishing translations of Korean poetry and fiction since 1990) will begin by talking about some of the books by which Korea and its region first became known in centuries past, books that were translated from and into a variety of languages. He will then review the ways in which Korean … [Read More]
SOAS conference: The Real North Korea: in its Multiplicity of Origins, Dynamics, and Futures
Speakers: Andrei Lankov, Park Hyung-jung, Tatiana Gabroussenko, Balazs Szalontai, Kevin Gray, Charlotte Webb, Camilo Aguirre, Peter Ward This special one-day symposium on North Korea’s history, society and economy will be co-hosted by the SOAS Centre of Korean Studies and the AKS Korean Studies Laboratory: ‘The Real North Korea’. It will be an opportunity to hear … [Read More]
Conference: Art and Soft Power in the UK and South Korea
This conference examines the role and impact of Korean art and artefacts in the formulation of soft power and development of UK-South Korea relations. The conference questions how acquisitions and displays of Korean artefacts in museums in Korea and Britain are influenced by and in turn shape UK-South Korea public diplomacy and soft power agendas. … [Read More]
SOAS 2022 Autumn seminars
The Tradition of Commons: Two Magna Cartas of England and Korea Prof Hang-Nyeong Oh (Jeonju University) 18 November ‘Magna Carta’ was a charter approved by King John of England in 1215. And there was a constitution called the Great Compendium of Statecraft (經國大典) in Korea in 1485. Article 33 of Magna Carta stipulates that “In … [Read More]
SOAS seminar: The Rise of The Modern Korean Horror Narrative
In pre-modern Chosôn, the ghost story did not develop much. It was after the modern era that the terrifying story of the appearance of ghosts and goblins in Korea emerged as a customary narrative style. In Chosôn Confucianism, ghosts did not belong to a world completely different from that of living people, and they were … [Read More]