The ANU Korea Update is the University’s flagship annual conference on Korea.
Program
Introductions and Welcome, 9:00 - 9:10am
- 9:00 Prof. Kyung Moon Hwang (Director, ANU Korea Institute)
- 9:05 Matt Tomlinson, School Director, School of Culture, History, and Language
9:10-10:05am
Speaker: Kyung Moon Hwang, ANU
- "The Authoritarian Spectre in South Korea"
The December 3 coup attempt and its equally disturbing aftermath revealed that, nearly four decades since formal democratisation, strains of dictatorship in South Korea still remain powerful, ready to be triggered like a dormant virus. This presentation examines the contours of this unshakable shadow over the body politic and its historical impact on South Korean democracy.
10:05-10:10am: 5-minute pause
10:10-11:05am
Speaker: Fyodor Tertitskiy, Korea Univ.
- "Full Reversal in North Korea: What Kim Jong-un’s Abandonment of Unification Means"
In late 2023 and early 2024, Kim Jong-un reversed a core tenet of North Korean ideology - the belief that Korea is one nation destined for reunification. By declaring South Korea a separate and hostile state, the North appears to have fundamentally shifted its long-standing stance. Does this signal the death of the unification dream?
11:05-11:10am: 5-minute pause
11:10-12:00pm
Discussion and open forum, moderated by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ANU
- "Democracy, Dictatorship, and Trauma on the Korean Peninsula, 2024-25"
- Panelists: Kyung Moon Hwang, Fyodor Tertitskiy, Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Lunch: 12:00-1:00pm
1:00-1:55pm
Speaker: Su-kyoung Hwang, Uni. Sydney. (Moderated by Hayeon Lee, ANU)
- "Commemorating the Korean War from the Margins"
This talk examines suppressed memories of the Korean War and how they have emerged from the margins through the activism of ordinary people and victims' families. It also explores how these marginalised memories have come to the fore through acts of commemoration, writing, and continued advocacy.
1:55-2:00pm: 5-minute pause
2:00-2:55pm
Speaker: Sung-Ae Lee, Macquarie Univ. (Moderated by Ying Xin Show, ANU)
- "Traumatic Subjectivity and the Persistence of History in Han Kang’s Fiction"
In Human Acts and We Do Not Part, Han Kang portrays two unforgettable and unforgivable events in which those in power massacred their own population. Han positions her readers as traumatised subjects by textualising experience from multiple perspectives, thus imprinting history on the mind and sometimes on the body of the novels’ readers. The readers' subjectivity is thereby assimilated into a larger framework of trauma and suffering borne of historical events.
2:55-3:15pm: Afternoon Tea
3:15-4:10pm
Speaker: Jinsook Choi, UNIST, Ulsan. (Moderated by Eunseon Kim, ANU)
- "Leveling Speech: Non-Honorifics and the New Egalitarianism in South Korea"
This talk describes how non-honorific speech reveals both progress and paradox in South Korean society, and explores whether new speech styles are rewriting old power structures.
4:10-4:15pm: 5-minute pause
4:15-5:10pm
Speaker: Susan Hwang, University of California at Santa Barbara. (Moderated by Roald Maliangkay, ANU)
- "From 'March' to 'Whiplash': Songs of Protest in South Korea"
The recent impeachment rallies in South Korea gave rise to countless iterations of the tanhaek peulleiriseuteu [impeachment playlist]—curated sets of songs sung at protests during the months leading up to the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol. Taking this phenomenon as a point of departure, this talk revisits the South Korean song movement of the 1980s to explore the enduring power of songs to forge affective communities and mobilise collective action in dark times.
5:15-5:30pm: Wrap-Up Discussion
Event Speakers
Kyung Moon Hwang
Kyung Moon Hwang is a Korea Foundation Professor in the School of Culture, History, and Languages. A historian of Korea, he has written extensively on the politics and culture of historical memory, conflicts, and debates in South Korea.
Fyodor Tertitskiy
Fyodor Tertitskiy is a lecturer at Seoul’s Korea University. He is the author of "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" and several other books on North Korean history and military.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Emeritus Professor at The Australian National University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and recipient of the 2013 Fukuoka Prize (Academic) for contributions to Asian studies.
Su-kyoung Hwang
Su-kyoung Hwang is a historian of modern Korea at The University of Sydney. Her research areas include the Korean War, modern warfare, human rights, gender, and environmental history. Her current research projects are: i) a history of air warfare in Korea and civilian experiences and ii) cultural analysis of natural life in South Korea.
Sung-Ae Lee
Sung-Ae Lee's major research focus is on literature, film and television drama of East Asia, with particular attention to Korea. Her research centres on relationships between cultural ideologies in Asian societies and representational strategies.
Jinsook Choi
Jinsook Choi is a linguistic anthropologist. Her research topics involved Mayan identity, bilingualism and language ideology in Guatemala. She teaches liberal arts courses at UNIST, a science and engineering university in Korea where English has been adopted as an official language.
Susan Hwang
Susan Hwang specializes in Korean literature and cultural studies, focusing on cultures of protest in modern Korea, intellectual history of East Asia, the relationship between aesthetics and politics, theories of world literature, and translation.