Based on long-term ethnographic research with labor and social movement activists, Against Abandonment: Repertoires of Solidarity in South Korean Protest is at once a chronicle of the life-and-death character of protesting precarity in South Korea and a searing examination of repertoires of solidarity for upending injustice.… more
I spoke as a panelist for the Korea Policy Forum organized by the George Washington University’s Institute for Korean Studies and shared some thoughts about the cold weather, gender and other politics of difference, and the uncertain future ahead.… more
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be co-editing Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Korea, a volume in the “Detours” series of alternative guide books. It’s a public-facing project that centers interdisciplinary, creative, and demilitarist feminist approaches, with aims to defamiliarize the ways in which Korea is popularly depicted by and consumed through a global tourist gaze.… more
Very cool. A public lecture Jennifer and I did back in 2019 got a shoutout in a Korea Times article… more
Back in September 2021, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jorlen Garcia, a student journalist at Claremont McKenna College. We talked about wide-ranging topics such as K-pop (of course), spy cams, and overall climates of patriarchy and gender inequality in South Korea. She did an amazing job editing the interview, which is published online at Asia Experts Forum.… more
I’m giving a talk in LA on Wednesday, October 23 about protest cultures in Korea and the Korean diaspora, co-presented with Jennifer Chun on research we’ve been doing for a while. We plan to do a little more than a typical academic talk with multiple projectors and audiovisual materials. An event organized by GYOPO. Please do RSVP.
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I visited GuUi (Gu-Åi, pronounced as Goo-yi) Station to pay respect and took a few photos. I happened to drop… more
Two articles recently published. ‘Our Past, Your Future’ discusses Korean missionaries’ work in East Africa and ‘Urban megachurches and contentious religious politics in Seoul’ is about E.Land labour organizing and connections to Somang Church.… more
Download Sewol Ferry Fact Sheet 2015 (PDF). Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea: Fact Sheet This fact sheet was researched and written… more
A matter of law enforcement or livelihood struggles of the urban poor? Winter is high season for street vending and urban crackdown as can be seen in the recent violence against street vendors in Gangnam district of Seoul. With hundreds of city-hired security contractors (a.k.a. “thugs”) recorded on video overturning carts and destroying vendor property, it’s also high time to consider the urgent questions of informal economy, urban poverty, and state violence. Are legalization and taxation the obvious solution? It’s not such a simple matter, the article argues. For one, there is an enormous range among street vendors, from corporate to livelihood-based, income levels, and vending forms…… more