The Ecology of Worldism at the Edge: Koryo-saram and Exile Trilogy

Speaker: Soyoung Kim, Documentary Filmmaker and Professor at Seoul National University of Arts

Moderator: Iris Kim, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of East Asian Cultures and Languages

Soyoung Kim is a scholar, filmmaker, and curator. She is Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at the Korea National University of Arts and Director of the Trans: Asia Screen Culture Institute, a position she has held since 2000. She previously served as Chief Investigator for The Compendium of Korean Film History (10 volumes) at the National Research Council (2014–2018) and has held visiting appointments at UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Duke University, and Le Havre University. She is also an editorial board member of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

Her English-language publications include Korean Cinema in Global Contexts: Postcolonial Phantom, Blockbuster and Trans-Cinema (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), Electronic Elsewheres (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), and the co-edited Geo-Spatiality in Asian and Oceanic Literature and Culture (2022). As a filmmaker, she directed the Women’s History Trilogy (2001–2008) and the Exile Trilogy (2014–2018), including Goodbye My Love, North Korea (2018). Her recent works include the feature Viewfinder (2010) and multimedia installations such as Ana Cosmic Archivist (2024).

Dr. Kim will deliver her lecture The Ecology of Worldism at the Edge: Koryo-saram and Exile Trilogy (2014–2018) on Friday, April 10 at 3pm.

The documentary Exile Trilogy approaches the Koryo-saram—the Korean diaspora in Russia and Central Asia—not as passive victims of Stalinist deportation but as agents of historical and cultural events. Heart of Snow: Heart of Blood(2014) traces the diaspora’s trans-Asian history while engaging the radical documentary practices of Song Lavrenti and his late-Soviet collective You and Me (Ты и Я), which explored displacement and environmental precarity. Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang (2016) turns to the Koryo Theater in Kazakhstan, following three generations of performers who sustain cultural memory through song. The final film, Goodbye My Love, North Korea (2018), documents eight North Korean film students who defected in Moscow in 1958 and later became artists in Central Asia.

Kim has previously described the Koryo-saram’s existence in Soviet Central Asia as “subaltern cosmopolitanism.” In this lecture, she expands the concept toward a compositional cosmopolitics—a laborious assembly of worlds in a post-contact zone where displaced human and non-human actors coexist in ecological ruins, a condition also addressed in the documentary practices of Song Lavrenti.

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 Thursday, April 9 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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Host or Publisher Center for Korean Research