On October 17, 2024, the Northeast Asia Center at SNUAC visited the Department of Sociology at Peking University in China to explore and initiate academic exchanges between the two institutions.

At the meeting, Prof. Baek-Yung Kim, Director of the Northeast Asia Center, gave a presentation titled “Life and Death of Cities in Northeast Asia: Urban Changes in Korea, Japan, and China in the Era of Post-developmentalism” as an introduction to the center’s core projects. Participants from the Northeast Asia Center included Baek-Yung Kim (Dept. of Sociology), Ran Kim (SNUAC), Hyun-jong Noh (Soongsil Peace and Unification Research Institute), Min-joo Cho (Institute of Humanities, Duksung Women’s University), and Soonjik Hong (SNUAC). From Peking University, attendees included Liu Neng (Associate Chair of Sociology), Tian Geng (Professor of Sociology), and Ling Peng (Associate Professor of Sociology), as well as several graduate students who actively joined in the roundtable discussion.

The two institutions broadly shared their research interests. The Department of Sociology at Peking University showed particular interest in common issues between China and South Korea, such as low birth rates and regional development imbalances, and expressed a strong commitment to future exchanges.