Archive for Research

Research snapshot: religious dimensions of militarism

03/06/2012 Research No comments

(Photo sources:  Hankyoreh and NewsNJoy)

South Korean Catholic priests are putting their lives on the line to oppose mil­i­tary base con­struc­tion: “To blow up the Gurombi Rocks, first blow up the peo­ple of faith!”

Gurombi Catholics

Catholics led a cer­e­mony of 153 bows, as they have done every day since August 25, 2011. This is in ref­er­ence to the mir­a­cles asso­ci­ated with the num­ber 153 in the Bible, but I think it is also rem­i­nis­cent of Buddhist prac­tice of tak­ing three pros­trate bows and one step (sambo ilbae 삼보일배 三步一拜), a main­stay in con­tem­po­rary protest reper­toire in Korea espe­cially in recent years.

Catholics bow153

In the mean­time, ultra-conservative Christians held a prayer rally on March 1 to denounce Communism, pro­mote the Christian Democratic Party, and vow to oblit­er­ate left­ists with­out mercy. Rev. KIM Hong-do, the retired pas­tor of the largest Methodist con­gre­ga­tion in the world, is quoted in this arti­cle for ser­mo­niz­ing, “Communism kills all peo­ple. I would rather die as a slave under blacks in Africa than live under Communism.” He always has a way with words.

Another right-wing Christian pas­tor, Rev. SUH Kyong-seok urged sup­port for naval base con­struc­tion and declared that he’s ready to head down to Jeju Island to “com­bat Catholics and left­ists” seen above.

Christianright1 Christianright2

In response, a Christian activist from Jeju wrote this open let­ter with a heart­felt plea: “When the Church stands to pro­tect state power, it may tem­porar­ily ben­e­fit from shar­ing that power. But the Church can­not then speak for Jesus Christ. Now is a time to pro­tect the gospel of peace for which Jesus gave up his life. To fol­low Jesus means to relin­quish the priv­i­lege and vested inter­ests and to embrace suf­fer­ing, but gained in return will be the priv­i­lege of being called a “child of God.”

Gurombi Catholics2

Language Travels: presentation at UIUC

03/06/2012 Research No comments

Jennifer Chun and I have writ­ten our first paper together based on the col­lab­o­ra­tive research we’ve been doing on Korean tem­po­rary res­i­dents in Vancouver. We pre­sented an early draft at the anthro­pol­ogy con­fer­ence in Montreal a few months back, and we have since revised the paper with a focus on youth, work (espe­cially “work­ing hol­i­day”), and mobile aspi­ra­tions. Jennifer will be pre­sent­ing the lat­est draft of this paper at the University of Illinois this week­end at a con­fer­ence orga­nized by a social sci­ence research lab called “the American University Meets the Pacific Century Project.” (see arti­cle)

NUS workshop in June 2012 : “The urban ecology of religion: growth and redevelopment in Seoul”

02/13/2012 Research No comments

I’ve been invited to attend a work­shop on “Doing Asian Cities: The MPI-ARI-TISS-AKS-Shanghai Urban Aspirations Project” (5−6 June 2012, Singapore) as part of the MPI/AKS project on urban aspi­ra­tions. It’s a chance to meet with other researchers work­ing on the Asian megac­i­ties project in Mumbai, Shangai, Singapore, and Seoul. Just sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing abstract:

The urban ecol­ogy of reli­gion: growth and rede­vel­op­ment in Seoul

With some of the largest and most spec­tac­u­lar megachurches in the world located in the City of Seoul, it is easy to find impres­sive the mate­r­ial pros­per­ity and polit­i­cal power asso­ci­ated with con­tem­po­rary Protestantism in South Korea. It is also easy to over­look the fact that in con­trast, nearly eighty per­cent of churches in Korea are quite small, with only fifty to two hun­dred mem­bers in their con­gre­ga­tion. There is much the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tion and polit­i­cal cri­tiques con­cern­ing the grow­ing gap between the rich and poor, cor­po­rate megachurches and vul­ner­a­ble microchurches. This paper addresses the pol­i­tics of scale and urban reli­gion as they relate to aspi­ra­tions for — and against — growth and (re)development in Seoul. In par­tic­u­lar, I will dis­cuss crit­i­cal ethno­graphic meth­ods includ­ing some new ideas for research­ing reli­gion (e.g. “cir­cle the church”) in the city.

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American University Meets the Pacific Century Conference, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

01/27/2012 Research No comments

My research col­lab­o­ra­tor, Jennifer Chun, will be attend­ing this con­fer­ence to present a paper that we co-wrote, “Language Travels: The Cosmopolitan Pursuits of Korean Temporary Residents in Vancouver.”

American University Meets the Pacific Century Conference
March 9 – 10, 2012
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Many American uni­ver­si­ties, like top-tier uni­ver­si­ties through­out the world, are increas­ingly becom­ing global insti­tu­tions, no longer held exclu­sively to national inter­ests. What is the impact of the esca­lat­ing num­bers of inter­na­tional under­grad­u­ates and how are they trans­form­ing the American uni­ver­sity? These ques­tions will be exam­ined on March 9 – 10, 2012 at the American University Meets the Pacific Century Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This con­fer­ence will fea­ture research from schol­ars in the United States, Great Britain, and South Korea.

The con­fer­ence is hosted in asso­ci­a­tion with the American University Meets the Pacific Century Project (AUPC, 2010-), an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of social sci­en­tist fac­ulty and stu­dents who are cur­rently research­ing the inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the under­grad­u­ate stu­dent body at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The project is prin­ci­pally inter­ested in the American uni­ver­sity as a con­tact zone in which record lev­els of inter­na­tional under­grad­u­ates, largely from Asia, meet American stu­dents whose futures are increas­ingly impacted by global trans­for­ma­tions, the eco­nomic and sci­en­tific rise of Asia among them.
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UK parliamentary debate on North Korea human rights

01/12/2012 Research No comments

Members of the British Parliament held a debate on January 11, 2012, regard­ing North Korea’s human rights and human­i­tar­ian cri­sis. The 90-minute debate, held in Westminster Hall in the House of Commons, was intro­duced by Fiona Bruce (Congleton, Conservative) who pre­sented a detailed descrip­tion of the dire con­di­tions in North Korea based on first­hand accounts of defec­tors and inter­na­tional experts. She high­lighted the story of a young man named Shin Dong-hyuk, describ­ing him as“the only per­son ever to have escaped from a North Korean prison camp.”

It was in meet­ings with the Conservative party human rights com­mis­sion, and at an event that I chaired on behalf of the Henry Jackson Society, that Shin Dong-hyuk told his life story. It is the per­sonal tes­ti­mony of some­one who was born into a North Korean prison camp, lived there for 23 years and then escaped. As my hon. Friend says, his story was author­i­ta­tive, valu­able and deeply moving.

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in camp 14 in 1982. Shin described the con­di­tions he endured for the first 23 years of his life. When he was 14 years old, his mother and brother were exe­cuted in front of him because they tried to escape. He was held for seven months in soli­tary con­fine­ment. The tor­ture he faced was unimag­in­ably inhu­mane. With extra­or­di­nary dig­nity and lack of bit­ter­ness, he described to us how he was hung upside down by his legs and hands from the ceil­ing, and on one occa­sion his body was burned over a fire. His tor­tur­ers pierced his groin with a steel hook; he lost consciousness.

On another occa­sion, Shin was assigned to work in a gar­ment fac­tory. Severe hard labour is a com­mon fea­ture of North Korea’s prison camps. He acci­den­tally dropped a sewing machine, and as a pun­ish­ment the prison guards chopped off his mid­dle fin­ger. According to Shin, cou­ples per­ceived by the author­i­ties to be good work­ers are arbi­trar­ily selected by prison guards and per­mit­ted, even forced, to get mar­ried, with a view to pro­duc­ing chil­dren who could, in turn, become model work­ers. Children born in the prison camp are, like Shin, treated as pris­on­ers from birth. As a child in the prison school, Shin recalled the teacher, who was also a prison guard, telling the chil­dren that they were ani­mals whose par­ents should have been killed. He told them that, by con­trast, he, the teacher, was a human, and that they should be grate­ful to be alive.

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