Diasporic Linkage between Manchukuo and Korean State Formation

Speaker: Han Suk-jung

Visiting Scholar at the Asian-Pacific Studies Institute, Duke University; Former President of Dong-A University

Moderator: Ruth Barraclough, Korean Foundation Associate Professor of Modern Korean History, Department of History, Columbia University

Suk-Jung Han is a historian of modern East Asia and former President of Dong-A University. His scholarship centers on Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, and its overlooked role in shaping South Korea’s postwar developmental state. His doctoral research at the University of Chicago helped reopen Manchukuo as an object of critical inquiry beyond nationalist historiography in Korea and China.

Han is the author of The Origin of the 1960s Korean Developmental Regime: Manchurian Modern (2016; English trans. 2024), a widely influential study tracing the colonial origins of South Korea’s developmental regime. The book was selected as one of the best humanities and social science books by the Korea National Academy of Sciences and has been reprinted eleven times. He has published extensively in Korean and English and has taught at Dong-A University for over thirty years, serving as Dean, Provost, and President.

Han has held visiting appointments at UC Irvine, the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto), the National University of Singapore, and is currently a visiting scholar at Duke University.

Professor Han will speak on The Origin of the 1960s Korean Developmental Regime: Manchurian Modern on Thursday, February 26, from 4–5:30 PM.

In this book talk, Suk-Jung Han discusses The Origin of the 1960s Korean Developmental Regime: Manchurian Modern, in which he rethinks South Korea’s postwar economic and cultural dynamism through the history of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria. Long frozen in both South and North Korean historiography as a sanctified site of anti-colonial resistance, Manchukuo is reopened here as a crucial but obscured space of modern state formation.

Han introduces the concept of colonial diffusion to show how institutions and practices developed under Japanese imperial rule were later absorbed into South Korea’s developmental state. He argues that Manchukuo functioned as a “black box” of the South Korean regime, enabling rapid economic control and mass mobilization during the Cold War.

PLEASE NOTE: For non-Columbia guests, registration is required to access the Morningside campus 24 hours prior to the event. After registering you will receive an email with a QR code that must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either the 116th Street & Broadway or 116th Street & Amsterdam gates for entry. Please register using a unique email address (one email address per registrant) by 12:00 PM on Wednesday, February 25 for campus access.

Names will be submitted for QR codes 1-2 days prior to the event and subsequently reviewed. Registrants will receive an email from CU Guest Access with the QR code before or on the day of the event.

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