안내

Hyunjung Chi specializes in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Korea and the history of medicine/psychiatry. She completed her PhD at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Her dissertation,“Managing the Distressed in an Age of Anxiety: Psychiatric Knowledge and Practice in South Korea, 1945-2000,” explored Korean psychiatrists as historical actors and examined their efforts to expand their profession, as they were developing their understanding of politics, illness, and normality, both within Korea and in a transnational context. Chi holds an MA in Sociology from Seoul National University and a BA in History from the University of California, Davis. Her work in the history of psychiatry in Korea has been published in the International Journal of Korean History, and her contributions to humanities research are forthcoming in various journals.

Gihong Yi is the CEO of MetriX Research & Consulting, part of MetriX Group, specializing in producing public data primarily for government use. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2002 and was at Hallym University from 2003 to 2020. With over 20 years of experience, he specializes in economic sociology, data science, research methodology, and complex systems. He has collaborated with institutions worldwide on diverse research and policy projects. His recent interests include technology, culture, and religion, applying a data-driven approach to interdisciplinary studies.

Kenny Wai-hin Wong is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University. His research focuses on the international history of Asia during the Cold War, particularly the diplomatic connections and the movement of people, knowledge, and capital across regions. His PhD examines how Japan and South Korea navigated their foreign relations with Asia, the distinct roles played by various actors—including networks in Hong Kong—and how this process unfolded within different local contexts across the region.

Changgil Kim served as the president of the Korea Rural Economic Research Institute and is currently a visiting scholar at Seoul National University Asia Center. Recently, he was appointed as the chairman of the Rural Subcommittee of the Presidential Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Policy. His research interests include agricultural economics and environmental economics. He is particularly interested in fostering agricultural human resources in developing countries and is working to build a Global Agricultural High-tech Network (GHAN). He is also researching climate-smart agriculture in response to climate change and food security in Southeast Asia.

Daeun Lee is a PhD candidate in Comparative Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests lie within mobility and migration studies, specifically focusing on the mobility of young people in Asia and transnational solidarity in Asian youth activism. Her PhD research explores foreigners’ “visa run” practices in Korea, which involve exiting and re-entering the country to extend their stay. She aims to examine how these “visa run” practices blur the boundaries between ‘legal vs illegal’ and ‘tourist vs migrant.’ Additionally, she seeks to identify the mobility rhythms and lifestyles created by regular and frequent border-crossings.

Dongsoo Kim is a ROK Naval Aviation Officer (O-5) with expertise in Maritime Security, Aerospace, Science Technology (ST), ICT, and Development Policy. Interesting parties in International Development Cooperation are North Korea and Africa. The main research projects are as follows. First, the Expansion Option of ROK PKO’s role in Humanitarian Assistance and Development in Africa. Second, the Development cooperation option of ST and ICT between South Korea and Africa.

Hojai Jung, an accomplished journalist and Ph.D. in Comparative Asian Studies, delves into Korea’s traditional-modern dynamics and explores the concept of “New Korean.” His journey spans various Asian countries, emphasizing Southeast Asia, interviewing influential figures like Thaksin and Mahathir. Completing his Ph.D. at NUS, he focuses on Asian media, examining state-run media in Myanmar and South Korea. His ongoing interests lie in comparative studies, particularly in Southeast and Northeast Asia, with a focus on media and cultural policy. Noteworthy books include “The Asian Age Comes Like K-Pop (2020)” and “Seeing the K Again (2021).”

Jaok Kwon is a sociologist and her research interests include the sociology of development, labor, gender, and transnational labor migration. Previously, she worked as a research fellow at the Max-Weber-Institute for Sociology at Heidelberg University. She also conducted postdoctoral research at Tohoku University and Hitotsubashi University in Japan after obtaining her PhD in sociology from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Japan. Her work on socioeconomic issues in East Asia has been published in various journals, including Gender Studies, Labor History, International Journal of Japanese Sociology, and Korea Observer.

Junghwan Kim is a sociologist studying and teaching in the area of cultural sociology and social theory. Recently, he has been working on the imaginary of Korean democracy, the meaning of being ‘grown-up’ in Korea, and the problem of intimacy and publicness in Choi Eunyoung’s works.

Kyungjin Lee is a visiting research fellow at Seoul National University Asia Center and a lecturer at the Division of International Studies at Ajou University. Her research interests lie in industrial policies, state-business relations, and central-local relations in China. Throughout her fellowship at SNUAC, she has been working on the local implementation of China’s aggressive industrial policy in Guangdong. The project is a follow-up to her Ph.D. dissertation, exploring industrial upgrading in GVCs and the role of local governments in ICT industries. She holds a Ph.D. in International Political Economy from the School of International Studies, Peking University in China.

Mehtap Kara is a visiting fellow at Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC). She received her PhD in International Relations from Eastern Mediterranean University and works as an assistant professor at Bahçeşehir Cyprus University. Her articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Turkish Studies, and Uluslararası Iliskiler-International Relations. Kara’s research at the SNUAC focuses on hedging strategies of secondary states including Turkey, India, South Korea in great power competition. Kara’s research fellowship at SNUAC has been funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye.

Minju Cho, an art historian in east Asian art history, received a BA in Art History at Duksung Woman’s University in Korea and completed her MA in History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS and PhD in Art History at Tsinghua University. Her current research is focused on Chinese and Korean art. Recently she as an executive administrative-editor published a book titled “Korean Art from the Cultural Perspective of East Asia”.

My Hang Thi Bui has recently defended her dissertation and is set to graduate in 2024 with a Ph.D. in Geography from Seoul National University. Her work engages with migrant studies, urban studies, and transnationalism. Given her Vietnamese background and academic training in South Korea, Bui has engaged in multi-sited ethnography and life-course approaches to investigate marriage migration, intra-group diversity within migrant communities, and transnational urban politics in the Asia-Pacific region. Her dissertation utilizes a place-based approach to explore the intertwining of historical and contemporary inter-Asian engagements in the politics of transnational placemaking between sister cities in South Korea and Vietnam.

Pan Seok Shin is a professor emeritus of Hongik University. He is a former Dean of PSM Graduate School and College of Science-Technology of Hongik University. Professor Shin has a B.A. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University, and a Ph.D. in Electric Power Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA. He worked as a faculty researcher at the Oak-Ridge National Lab., USA in 2010, and has served as a member of Korea Standards Committee from 2014. He published several books and articles both in Korean and English.

Pavel P. Em is a Research Associate at the Center of Korean Studies, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Pavel obtained a Candidate of Science degree in urban geography from Moscow State University in 2013. His work primarily concerns urban development in North Korea and has been published in such journals as Cities, Habitat International, European Journal of Korean Studies, and North Korean Review.

Sang-Hyun Yun, an assistant professor in Kyungnam University’s History Department, specializes in the evolution of individuality and human rights from the 19th to 20th centuries, with a focus on Korean liberalism, viewed through an East Asian lens. Earning her Ph.D. from Seoul National University, her dissertation probed Korea’s modern intellectual history. Her key publications include seminal works like “The Cold War and Historiography in East Asia” and “Nationalism in East Asia: Origins and Comparative Analyses.” Her research delves into the social psychology behind the liberal appropriation of the April Revolution, Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University among other scholarly endeavors.

Sung Chun Jung is a senior research fellow at KIEP (Korea Institute for International Economic Policy), where he has been doing his research on Japanese Economy since 2003. He got his Ph.D in Economics from Hitotsubashi University in 2002.

Suhyoung Sung received her Ph.D. from Tsinghua University in 2021 and is currently an affiliated professor at Mokwon University. She specializes in researching medieval Buddhist art in East Asia, focusing on the Liao and Jin Pagodas. She is deeply interested in the synchronic and diachronic characteristics of religious art, faith, and rituals. Her current project involves studying the cave temples of the Northern Song and Jin Dynasties in Northern Shaanxi Province. Her research has been published in various journals, including the Korean Journal of Art History, The Journal of the Korean Association for Buddhist Studies, and the Palace Museum Journal (China).

Wonjung Min holds a Ph.D. in Latin American literature and focuses on the Asian diaspora in Latin America and the fandom of Asian pop culture in the Spanish-speaking world. She has worked at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC) and is currently an associate researcher at the Asian Studies Center, UC. She is coauthor of Transnational Hallyu: The Globalization of Korean Digital and Popular Culture (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021) and editor of Estudios Coreanos para hispanohablantes: un acercamiento crítico, comparativo e interdisciplinario (Ediciones UC, 2015) and has published widely on the reception of Asian pop culture in Latin America.

Yunhee Kim earned her Ph.D. in Government and International Affairs at Durham University (UK). She researches security policy in the Global South, especially in connection with Sino-African relations. She has published articles such as “The Conception of ‘Community of Common Destiny’ with Africa through China’s Multilateralism -Concentrating on the Forum on China and Africa Cooperation-“, “China’s Strategy towards Africa in a multipolar world”, “The Intersection between Diplomatic Security and Cooperation: Korea’s Veteran Diplomacy Towards Türkiye”, and others. As a visiting fellow at SNUAC, she will conduct research on China’s security policy towards Africa from various points of view in accordance with the ever-changing international relations.

Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and the Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Until recently, he directed the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (2018-2023) and was an Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2021-2024). Having more than 20 years of experience in researching Asian cities, Hyun’s work centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation, focusing on speculative urbanisation, gentrification, politics of displacement, mega-projects, mega-events as urban spectacles, and Asian urbanism. His books include Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement (Policy Press, 2015); Planetary Gentrification (Polity Press, 2016); Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (2021, Routledge); Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-pandemic World (2022, LSE Press); The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (forthcoming, Routledge). He currently works on two other book projects, including a monograph entitled Making China Urban (for Routledge) and a monograph on the making of the speculative city of Seoul.

Yeonkyung Lee is an architectural and urban historian. She earned her Ph.D. in 2013 from the Graduate School of Yonsei University with a dissertation titled “Space and Society of Japanese Settlement in Seoul from 1885 to 1910, focused on Changes of Urban Environment.” Her research interests include the modern architectural and urban history of East Asian countries and the heritagization of modern buildings. She has conducted research on the modern architectural and urban history of Seoul, Incheon, and Taipei, and has also served as a committee member for the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea.

Hyunjung Cho is an associate professor in the School of Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). She received her BA in art history and archaeology from Seoul National University and received her MA and PhD in art history from University of Southern California in 2011.Hyunjung was a visiting scholar in the department of architecture of Kyoto University in 2020 and she is a recipient of Fulbright scholarship of 2024-25.

Song Ha Joo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Kookmin University, South Korea. Her research focuses on authoritarian politics and the politics of migration with a regional emphasis on post-communist Europe and Eurasia.

Hyewon Baek, Ph.D. is an expert in Arabic Literature and Criticism, holding her degree from the University of Jordan. She teaches in the Arabic language department and the Graduate school of interpretation and translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Additionally, she freelances as an interpreter and translator, with notable works including translations of Arabic novels like ‘The Bamboo Stalk’ and ‘The Images, The Icon, and The Covenant’ into Korean for publication.

Soonjick Hong served as the Senior Research Fellow at the Reunification Economy Center of the Hyundai Research Institute. Currently, he is a visiting professor in the Department of Northeast Asian Studies at Chung-Ang University and a policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification. During his tenure at the Hyundai Research Institute, he carried out extensive research projects on Hyundai Group’s investment plan for the Geumgangsan Mountain tourism project and the Gaeseong Industrial Complex project and inter-Korean cooperation plan. His primary research interests include North Korean economy, inter-Korean economic cooperation, and North-South economic integration.

Minwoo Yun received the first Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, USA and the second Ph.D. in International Politics from the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Seoul National University. Previously, he taught at Wheeling Jesuit University, USA as an Assistant Professor. He now teaches in the Department of Police Science & Security Studies at Gachon University, ROK as a Full Professor. He has also served as a consultant for various agencies and institutions including National Intelligence Service, Defense Counterintelligence Command, and other government agencies and military branches.

KIM YONGJUN is an archaeologist whose major field is South Asia. He archived Ph.D. from Dept. of Archaeology and Art History, Deccan College(Pune, India) and now worked as Research Professor at Institute of Cultural Heritage Convergence, Korea University. He has conducted several archaeological works on proto-historic and early historic sites in South and Southeast Asia since 2008. He has specialized the forensic/landscape archaeology and published more than 20 articles in international journals.

Jieun Lee, a scholar in Indian History and South Asian Studies, is a Professor in the History Department at Sejong University in Seoul. Her research focuses on the transformation of society and social ideologies during India’s colonial and post-colonial periods.

Currently, Professor Lee’s work delves into the evolution of Hindu nationalism and contemporary social and political ideologies in India and their application to the everyday lives of Indian people. As a dedicated academic, she is committed to establishing a distinctive Korean perspective in Indian studies and its methodology.

Hyang A Lee is an assistnat professor at Department of Sociology, Gyeongsang National University. She earned her PhD in 2019 from the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, UK. Her PhD thesis titled “Public Cemeteries and the production of urban space in colonial Seoul, 1910-1945” earned the best PhD dissertation prize of Choi Jae Seok Memorial Awards in 2019. Her research interests include urban sociology, cultural sociology, medical sociology and social theory.

Yong-Ho Kim, visiting scholar at Asia Center of Seoul National University is also concurrently serving as the Director of the Yun Po-sun Institute for Democracy, He is the former professor of Political Science at Inha University in Incheon, South Korea. He used to serve as National Election Commissioner of ROK from 2014 to 2020. He previously worked as Professor of Political Science at Hallym University(1998-2002) and Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (currently National Diplomatic Academy of ROK, 1990-1998). He used to serve as  the President of the Korean Political Science Association during the year of 2006.

Do Chan Bae is a visiting scholar at Seoul National University Asia Center and a lecturer at the Department of Smart-farm Science at Kyung Hee University. His research interests lie in climate-smart agriculture, international agriculture development, and food security in developing countries and Asia. He received his PhD in Crop Science and Biotechnology from Seoul National University.

Bumhym Bek served as Vice Secretary General of the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat, Ambassador for International Relations in Gangwon-Do, and as the Korean Consul General in Frankfurt/M, Germany. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Seoul National University Asia Center. Additionally, he works as an adjunct professor at Woosuk University. His research interests include Sino-Eurasian internal and external affairs and history. He contributes a monthly column on Korea-China-Japan relations to the news agency News1. He has published seven books on international relations and history.

Soyeon Ahn holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Houston, Texas. She previously worked as an analyst at the Korea National Oil Corporation. Her expertise lies in comparative politics and international relations, with a particular emphasis on the Middle East. She is currently a visiting scholar at the West Asia Center, Asia Center at Seoul National University, and teaches Arabic and Middle Eastern politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Her primary academic interests include political regime types, institutions, civil society in the Middle East, as well as the rentier economy and regime survival.

Joon Kim serves as a member of Korean National Committee, Asia Regional Committee, and Governing Council of Future Earth, i.e., Global Sustainability Research Network (futureearth.org). He is a former Professor of Complex Systems and Sustainability Science at Seoul National University, Yonsei University, The University of Tokyo, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA where he  received his PhD in Biological Systems Engineering specializing Biometeorology. He has been studying systems visioneering, energy·matter·information exchange in ecological-societal systems, sustainability metrics, and more recently, science-policy-society interactions regarding sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Seungho Baek is an associate professor of financial economics and finance at the Graduate Center and Brooklyn College of the City University New York. His research focuses on empirical asset pricing, stock and currency valuation under uncertainty, asset return and risk predictability, crashes and bubbles in financial markets, derivatives pricing, and empirical portfolio management and investment. His work has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Futures Markets, Journal of Fixed Income, Applied Economics, Finance Research Letters, and Journal of Alternative Investments. Additionally, it has been selected for various research awards and grants.

Kyuduck Byun is a PhD candidate in Comparative Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include the monarchy during premodern Vietnam, comparative studies between Korea and Vietnam, and Korea and Vietnam within the context of the East Asian world. Recently, he has been focusing on his PhD research, which is a comparative study of the monarchy in Korea and Vietnam from the 11th to the 14th centuries. He aims to explore how both Korea and Vietnam operated their monarchies and formed and developed their own states and societies during this period.

Yuna Lee is a foresight practitioner and a PhD researcher in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London. Her research interests revolve around foresight and forecasting, focusing on robust and innovative measures/techniques for “Futures of Risk and Resilience” in the context of policy processes for a sustainable environment. As a visiting fellow at SNUAC, she will mainly delve into a comparative analysis of the interpretation and application of strategic foresight in Asian and Western contexts under the project “Strategic Foresight for Global Risks in Government: Local, National to International”.

Sujin Lim is a visiting scholar at Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC). She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Seoul National University and works as a research fellow at INSS. Her academic intersts include North Korean society and its people, as well as inter-Korean relations.

Ilpyo Hong served as the Secretary General of the National Research Council on Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences under the Prime Minister. Prior to that, he worked at the Blue House(the Presidential Office), the National Assembly, independent think tanks such as Institute of the Future, the Hope Institute, and the Hankyoreh Economic Research Institute, which is affiliated with the Hankyoreh newspaper, and People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy which is known as the most influential NGO in Korea. He received his Ph.D. from Seoul National University’s Department of Sociology in 2006 on the topic of “Citizen Legislative Movements in the aftermath of Democratizaion of Korea,” which he published as a book. From 2006 to 2008, he was a visiting fellow at the Sigur Center at George Washington University in the United States and published a book on the US think tanks. Since then, he has continued his research on social movements and democracy, legislation and policy making, and think tanks in Korea and around the world, and has published a number of academic articles in various journals and columns and reports in newspapers. His recent research interests include the history, current status, characteristics, and strategies of “Asian think tanks,” focusing on Korea, China, Japan, and Indonesia, and he is working to establish exchanges, cooperation, and networking among them.

Siyi Cecilia Liu is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University College London. Her research interests are within digital geography and regional study, funneling down to data mobility and governance and the formation of city-region. Her PhD research works on the production of smart city-region through data sharing in the Greater Bay Area in China. She aims to explore how cross-border data flow mediates the techno-political reordering of the city-region.

Valérie Gelézeau is a cultural geographer and Koreanologist, professor at EHESS, Paris, France. She examines the Korean society in its relationship with space: in Seoul, in the new towns, on the border between the two Koreas, in North Korea. Her current project entitled “Geographies of Post-Urban Korea” questions the experience of space on the frontier between urban and non-urban or meta-urban regions. She published Doing Fieldwork in North Korea (2021 with Joinau), De-bordering Korea. Tangible and intangible legacies of the Sunshine Policy (2013 with De Ceuster and Delissen), and Seoul a Megapolis (2011). Her book Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk (The Republic of Apartments, Humanitas, 2007) was distinguished as a “recommended reference in the social sciences” by the South Korean Ministry of Culture. She was also awarded the France-Korea Cultural Prize in 2008 and the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2005.

EHESS page: https://www.ehess.fr/fr/personne/val%C3%A9rie-gel%C3%A9zeau

Hana Kim received her Ph.D in Geography and GIS from the University of Cincinnati, specializing in spatial statistics and health geography. Her research primarily studies infectious diseases affecting underserved populations in Asia and Africa. With an emphasis on understanding spatial disparities in healthcare access, she aims to develop region-specific healthcare intervention strategies that improve public health outcomes and support regional economic development by addressing these inequalities.