Korea

Sei Jeong Chin is a historian of modern China, specializing in political, social and cultural history as well as legal history in 20th century China. She is currently working on a new project on the Chinese propaganda during the Korean War (1950-1953). At the same time, she is revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, which explores the transformation of the media culture and its impact on the changes of the relations between the state and the political dissidents from the Nationalist period (1927-1949) to the early PRC (1949-1957).

She received her B.A. and M.A. from Ewha Womans University, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She worked as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. (2007-2008) and taught various courses on Chinese history. During her graduate years at Harvard, she spent a year in China as a visiting scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and did her field research in various cities including Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, Chongquing in China and Taibei in Taiwan. 

Jaebin Yoo is a Ph. D. candidate in Art History at Seoul National University, Korea. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Seoul National University and has been a lecturer teaching Korean Art History for the last five years. She is currently working on her dissertation, "Court-Sponsored Paintings from the Era of King Jeongjo (r.1776-1800)," in which she examines how King Jeongjo promoted paintings and prints to advance his own political aims and improve the image of the ruler. In particular, she hopes to illuminate the environment in which court art was worshipped, discussed, and distributed by placing these practices in their ritual, political, and bibliographical contexts. At HYI, she will focus on the increasing use of illustrated prints in official publications under Jeongjo’s order, and investigate his strategy of visualizing knowledge in relation to illustrated prints and encyclopedias that were officially imported from Qing China. 

Soon-Yong Pak is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Dr. Pak is an anthropologist specializing in anthropology of education and currently teaches related subjects as well as courses on qualitative research methodology. He has carried out several fieldwork and research projects in Korea and Turkey. He has published a number of papers on the social history of schooling as well as the cultural dimensions of education in his regions of interest. His ongoing research interests involve the changing social landscape of Korean society and how the education sector is affected as it moves toward a multicultural setting. His more recent research projects involve North Korean refugees, foreign migrant workers, multicultural families, and native English teachers in Korea. During his stay at Harvard-Yenching Institute, he hopes to complete his thesis on the academic resilience of school-aged North Korean refugees by utilizing data collected through narrative inquiry.

Jung Min is Professor of Korean Literature at Hanyang University, Republic of Korea. Min earned his B.A. in Korean Literature, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Pre-Modern Korean Literature and Classical Studies from Hanyang University. After completing his dissertation on “Discourses on Literature and Prose Exposition of Late Chosŏn,” his research has focused on Korea’s eighteenth century literature, which gave him a befitting opportunity to serve as the president of Eighteenth Century Studies of Korea in 2006-2008. 

His main research interest is literary thought and cultural identities of eighteenth century Korean intellectuals.  In order to examine cultural interaction in the macro sphere of eighteenth century East Asia, he has conducted extensive research on travelogues to China and Japan—called Yŏnhaengnok and Sahaengnok, respectively—which have been recorded by various government delegations of Korea. His earnest exploration of the communicative modes and cultural dynamics of early modern East Asia sheds new light on the transformation of aesthetic culture and intellectual shifts in late Chosŏn Korea. 

John M. Frankl is a Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholar and Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. His permanent appointment is at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College where he serves as Associate Professor of Korean and Comparative Literature. Professor Frankl completed a B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley in East Asian Languages, after which he earned an M.A. at Yonsei University in the Department of Korean Language and Literature. Following Yonsei, he attended Harvard University, earning an A.M. in Regional Studies: East Asia and a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations in 2003. He then returned to U.C. Berkeley to spend the following year as a postdoctoral fellow, after which he returned to Korea and Yonsei.

He is the author of the book, Han’guk munhak-e nat’anan oeguk ŭi ŭimi (Images of “The Foreign” in Korean Literature and Culture) published in Seoul by Somyŏng in 2008, as well as several articles on Yi Sang, the most recent— “Distance as Anti-Nostalgia: Distorted Memories of Rural Korea in Yi Sang’s ‘Ennui’”—appearing in The Journal of Korean Studies, Spring 2012. During his year at Harvard, he is completing a manuscript on Yi Sang, with particular focus on his essays.

KIM Jean-young is Professor, Dept. of Russian Language and Literature at Yonsei University. She did undergraduate study at Wheaton, Mass., and graduate study at Yale (Ph.D. in Slavic, '92). Aside from a semester stay as an exchange student in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), one full sabbatical year was spent at the St. Petersburg State University as an exchange professor (1997-98). Her main scholarly interest is in  Russian Romanticism and poetry, and comparative study of Russian and Korean literatures. 

Professor Kim is a scholar in Six Dynasties literature, especially Chinese literary sketches. He is a professor in Yonsei University, Department of Chinese Language and Literature. He received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese Literature. The former was received from Seoul National  University, and the latter was from Yonsei University. His research at the Harvard-Yenching Institute was titled "The Historical Meaning of theTai-ping guang-ji, the early Song Dynasty collection of ancient Chinese fictions."