[Book Concert] Prof. Young Seo Baik’s ‘Three Events that Shaped the History of Modern China: 1919 · 1949 · 1989’

Date: February 24th, Wednesday, 2021 15:00 – 17:30
Location: Youngone Hall (2F), SNUAC (Bldg. 101) & Online via Zoom

Participate online via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88972239518?pwd=RVJtM3JnaTgyMXpzNmlCbEc3NWR3QT09

As part of our project to reflect on Korean discourses related to Asia formed after the 1990s, we are holding a book concert on Three Events that Shaped the History of Modern China by Prof. Young Seo Baik, who has led the East Asian discourse. In collaboration with the Center for East Asian Studies at SNU, we would like to attempt an insight over the 100 years of changes in East Asia beyond the history of a single nation through a discussion with scholars from diverse fields of interest in history, literature, and social sciences.

Introduction of the Book

Three Events that Shaped the History of Modern China: 1919 · 1949 · 1989 is a book that functions as an interim closing of Prof. Young Seo Baik’s research on Modern Chinese history. The author has been a leading figure in academia and the cultural scene both as a scholar and an advocate of practical studies. He surveys modern China around three major events: the May Fourth Movement (1919), the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949), and the Tiananmen Movement (1989). He has chosen these three events among the rocky history of modern China because those three events have marked the 100th, 70th, and 30th year as of 2019, and because he wanted to represent the ‘reform of 100 years’ in modern China by observing the symbolism of Tiananmen (天安門) as a public sphere, to which he had been interested since when he was writing his Ph.D. dissertation. Indeed, these events all occurred around Tiananmen and have left deep traces in Chinese society today. The author takes the main melody that penetrates the three events to be ‘the people’s experience of concentration and autonomy’ and seeks to show the traces of the main subjective body of reform. In this perspective, he considers 1919 to be the ‘era of New Youth and alliance of people from all classes’, 1949 the ‘era of the party and the people’, and 1989 the ‘moment of autonomy of the masses’.

Author Bio

Prof. Young Seo Baik graduated and received his Ph.D. from the Dept. of Asian History at SNU. He has served as the Dean of College of Liberal Arts at Yonsei University, director of Institute of Korean Studies, executive editor at Changjak gwa Bipyeong (Creation and Criticism), and the president of the Korea Academic Association of Contemporary Chinese Studies and the Korean Association for Studies of Modern Chinese History, currently is a professor emeritus at the Department of History, Yonsei University, as well as the chairman of Segyo Institute. His publications are single-authored monographs The Way of Social Humanities, Questioning East Asia Again at Key Sites, The Return of East Asia, A Study on Contemporary University Culture of China,『思想東亞: 韓半島視角的歷史與實踐』, 『橫觀東亞: 從核心現場重思東亞歷史』, and『共生への道と核心現場: 實踐課題としての東アジア』; co-authored and co-edited books including The Regional Order of East Asia, For Those Who Think and Resist: Selected Essays of Lee Young-hee, The Reform of 100 Years, History of Korea-China Relations for Tomorrow, and An Eye for Seeing Taiwan; translated works including Ten Events that Made East Asia, and Okinawa, the Site of Structural Discrimination and Resistance.