Rethinking Korea Lecture Series: Dr. Hoi-eun Kim

The Korean peninsula exerts an outsized influence on almost every facet of the world today. South Korea has emerged as one of the largest economies in the world, whose exports include everything from advanced technologies to popular culture. North Korea remains an authoritarian regime, whose efforts to challenge its international isolation threatens to ignite a global conflict. The peninsula is thus a critical engine of the global economy and a volatile flashpoint of geopolitical tensions. It is too important to be overlooked, let alone ignored.Now in its second year, the Rethinking Korea: New Perspectives on a Critical Region speakers series continues to invite an interdisciplinary roster of scholars to offer novel perspectives on Korea while situating its complex place within global developments. We invite speakers to share their work that will not only shed light on the internal dynamics and rich history of Korea but also explore the complex relationship between this critical region and the larger world.

This lecture will feature speaker Hoi-eun Kim, a social and cultural historian of modern Europe and modern East Asia, who has an ongoing interest in the interactions between Germany, Japan, and Korea in the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, he focuses on medical doctors as transnational agents of knowledge formation and empire-building. Currently, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Awards for Faculty), he is writing a book on Japanese doctors in colonial Korea (1910-1945) as researchers, teachers, and private practitioners.

The speakers series is made possible by the South Korea Initiative Fund, which is dedicated to helping establish an institutional commitment to Korean Studies at Northeastern, offering financial support to students studying or working in Korea, and educating the community about important issues regarding Korea in the world.

Host or Publisher Northeastern University Asian Studies Program