Seminars

This talk traces the genealogy of “enhancing immunity” to examine changing cultural and social imaginations of health in South Korea. How does health become culturally intelligible, socially addressable, and materially actionable? I approach this question through South Korean advertisements for Korean red ginseng (hongsam), focusing on the visual images of “immunity bubbles.” Against the backdrop of state-led efforts to scientifically validate traditional Korean medicine (hanuihak), ginseng’s traditional efficacy of strengthening original ki/qi was reformulated through scientific research and regulatory certification as the functional claim of “enhancing immunity.” Yet scientific validation alone has not made this claim publicly meaningful or persuasive. Drawing on ethnographic research with ginseng scientists and marketing professionals, alongside a corpus of print and media advertisements, I trace a chain of translations from ki/qi to immunity, from scientific evidence to the language of bodily defense, and from protective shields to soft, transparent bubbles. I argue that these translations were guided by a language ideology of communicability: assumptions about which words, images, and sensory qualities can most effectively resonate with audiences and “touch” consumers. The bubble rendered immunity as an approachable form of protection associated with softness, warmth, and familial care. It also registered a broader shift from earlier representations of health through masculine vitality, physical strength, and stamina toward an understanding of immunity as something cultivated for oneself and safeguarded for children, parents, and other loved ones. By following the genealogy of a health claim across medical texts, laboratories, regulatory institutions, and commercial media, the talk shows that health acquires social force through the semiotic and ideological labor that makes it recognizable, persuasive, and actionable.

Edhi Alice (dir. Ilrhan Kim, 2024, 130 min) An elegant portrait of two South Korean women in transition that calmly unfolds. The first part focuses on Edhi, a modest and cheerful woman who hopes to feel good in her own body after her surgery. The second part of the film revolves around Alice, a quiet personality who is at a different stage in her life and her transition. Alice is also the lighting technician for the film crew, whose members regularly appear on camera in a way that reveals the careful thought that was given to how the trans experience would be portrayed. When Edhi performs an intimate procedure on camera, the presence of the crew feels slightly uncomfortable, but at the same time testifies to mutual respect and approval. Edhi and Alice struggle with their relationships with family members, the fear of being turned away from the public bath, or having to identify themselves before the gender in their passport is changed. The disapproval in South Korean society is also evident in the background story of Hui-soo, who was discharged from military service after undergoing sex reassignment surgery while on leave.

This presentation explores the writings of Korean modernist poet O Changhwan preceding his decision to cross the 38th parallel and move to the northern zone of the Korean peninsula in 1947. Beginning and ending with O’s poetic travelogue of a subsequent journey to Moscow, my focus is on thinking through how O’s writing unsettles dominant understandings of Cold War modernism. My research on O is part of a larger work-in-progress in which I examine how the writings of the modernists who went north in the late 1940s allow for a more provisional history of modernism to come into view, one shaped by decolonisation and the refusal of anti- communism, and one that sought a home, however transiently, in the nascent revolutionary- socialist state of North Korea.

This event brings together two scholars whose recent work critically engages with the aesthetic, affective, and political practices that have shaped South Korea’s protest culture over the past decade. From the national trauma of the Sewol ferry disaster to the evolving landscape of contemporary demonstrations, these presentations examine how performance, ritual, and multispecies frameworks offer new understandings of democratic participation. Areum Jeong will present from her new book, Beyond the Sewol: Activist Theatre and Performance in South Korea and the Diaspora (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2025), the first monograph to explore how artists and activists have used performance to commemorate the ferry tragedy and mobilize public empathy. Gowoon Noh will present new research on the 2024–25 Yoon Suk-yeol impeachment protests, proposing a framework of “multispecies democracy” to analyze emergent solidarities and ethico-political imaginaries that extend beyond the human. Together, these two presentations will be in dialogue with Sohl Lee’s work on the minjung art movement and broader histories of participatory aesthetics in Korea, offering a timely discussion on the evolving role of art and performance in shaping democratic futures.

The talk explores how memory, ecology, and place intertwine in the Giving Forest (pseudonym) of Jeju Island, South Korea. Once a site of violence during the April 3rd Uprising and mid-twentieth-century state massacres, and later a space of afforestation and tourism development, the Giving Forest has become a living archive of layered histories and ecological regeneration. Drawing on ethnographic research with Jeju villagers, conservationists, and environmental activists, the talk traces how people engage with these landscapes as spaces of mourning, care, and resistance. By attending to the social and affective lives of the Giving Forest, this talk invites us to consider how multispecies relations hold memory and articulate claims to justice. In doing so, the talk illuminates how the work of remembering is inseparable from the work of reworlding.