Soh Jaipil Lecture Series with Gi-Wook Shin

From resentment towards economic retaliation over THAAD deployment to culture wars over hanbok and kimchi, South Korean public sentiment towards China has drastically deteriorated over the past few years, becoming even worse than sentiment toward Japan. In this talk, Professor Gi-Wook Shin will illuminate factors that contribute to Koreans’ negative views of China, in comparison to Koreans' historically negative sentiments of Japan and anti-American sentiments of past decades. He will discuss how these anti-China sentiments may play out in the Yoon Suk-Yeol administration’s policy towards China, as well as potential implications for the U.S.-ROK alliance.

Gi-Wook Shin (Left) is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in Sociology and a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He has been serving as the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2005, as well as the founding director of the Korea Program since 2001. His research concentrates on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations, with focus on Korea and broader Asia. Shin is the author/editor of over twenty books and numerous articles, including South Korea’s Democracy in Crisis: The Threats of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization; The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security; Shifting Gears in Innovation Policy from Asia; Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War; One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era; Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia; and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea.

Jisoo M. Kim (right) is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures. She is the Founding Director of the Institute for Korean Studies and the Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center at GW. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Korean Studies. She is a specialist in gender, law, and emotions in Korean history. Her broader research interests include gender and sexuality, crime and justice, forensic medicine, literary representations of the law, history of emotions, vernacular, and gender writing. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation by JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled Sexual Desire, Crime, and Gendered Subjects: A History of Adultery Law in Korea. She received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Elliott School of International Affairs, Lindner Family Commons (Room 602), 1957 E Street Northwest, Washington, United States