EVENT DETAILS

Korea at Nature's Edge: Environment & Society on the Korean Peninsula

Bringing together a range of scholars concerned with the entanglement of nature and society in the Korean peninsula, this conference aims to define the still-embryonic field of Korean environmental history.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Welcoming Remarks (8:45am)

Kyung Hyun Kim, Albert Park, David Fedman, & Eleana Kim

Panel 1: Surveying the Physical Context (9-10am)

What are the defining features of the geophysical context of the Korean peninsula? What challenges do they pose to the analysis of environmental issues on the peninsula and how will our conference/edited volume address these challenges?

Speakers:
Marc Los Huertos, Pomona College
Patrick Fox, Swedish Red Cross

Panel 2: Cultivating Korea (10-12pm)

Agriculture has shaped life and landscape on the peninsula for centuries. What historical actors and agents have shaped agriculture production? What have been the larger implications of agricultural regime shifts? How might we use agriculture as a lens into local/regional history in Korea? How do environmental issues around agriculture illuminate political, economic, and cultural issues in Korea?

Paper 1: "Cultivating the North: Agricultural Improvement and Frontier Settlement in Chosŏn Korea," Wenjiao Cai, Harvard University

Paper 2: "Communal Environmentalism in the Organic Farming Movement in South Korea, 1976-1994," Yonjae Paik, Australia National University

Discussant: Ann Sherif, Oberlin College

Break for Lunch

Panel 3: Landscape and Affect (1:30-3:30pm)

Conceptions of Korean nature took shape in the minds of its residents as much as in the landscape itself. How, then, have Koreans in different periods imagines, visualized, or described the natural world? How have Korean notions of landscape shaped their own sense of national identity and the peninsula's place in the world?

Paper 1: "The Promise of the Wild: the Political Life of Jeju Island's Indigenous Forest," Jeongsu Shin, University of Illinois

Paper 2: "Environmental Crisis and the Politics of Frugality: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Eighteenth-Century Korean Visual Culture," Sooa Im McCormick, Cleveland Museum of Art

Discussant: Margherita Long, University of California, Irvine

Break for coffee

Wrap-Up Discussion (4:00pm-5:00pm)

Friday, April 20, 2018

Panel 4: Global Inflections (9-11am)

People, ideas, natural resources, and diseases have flowed fluidly in and out of the peninsula for centuries. It stands in many respects as a cross-cultural conduit of Northeast Asia. What role has the Korean peninsula played in shaping transnational environmental trends, forces, or patterns? How might we use the peninsula as a lens into larger environmental issues (such as industrial pollution or global warming) that transcend national boundaries? What does the study of Korea offer to the field of environmental history more generally?

Paper 1: "The Politics of Environmental History in North Korea: Between Developmentalism and Humanitarianism," Suzy Kim (Rutgers University) & Ewa Erikkson (The Red Cross)

Paper 2: "Global Ecologies, Unruly Earthquakes, and South Korea's Nuclear-Energy Entanglements," Nan Kim, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Discussant: Youngmin Choe, University of Southern California

Working Lunch/Discussion

Panel 5: Conservation and Conflict (1-3pm)

Situated between China, Japan, and Russia, Korea has long been subject to imperial rivalries, occupation, and foreign war. Efforts to manage Korea's natural resources have routinely spawned conflict. How, then, have different governing structures approached natural resource management? What have been the ecological consequences of these conflicts? How are the legacies of war inscribed on the landscape?

Paper 1: "Outpost of Empire: The Mongol Origins of Korean Environments," John S. Lee, Yale University

Paper 2: "Making Communal Rules on Collection of Forest Resources in the 20th Century," Yi Uyŏn, Seoul National University

Discussant: Char Miller, Pomona College

Break for coffee

Panel 6: Materiality and Modernization (3:30-5:30pm)

Amply endowed with natural resources (including coal, timber, and gold), the Korean peninsula has long been viewed as a repository of materials essential for state-building. How have different regimes viewed, managed, conserved, and exploited the Korean landscape and to what ends? How have the uses of Korea's natural materials changed over time and how in turn has this shaped the evolution of Korea's material culture? 

Paper 1: "Dammed Fish: Japanese Hydropower, Korean Expertise, and the Remaking of a Piscatorial Periphery at the Yalu River," Joseph Seeley, Stanford University

Paper 2: "What's in a name: the discursive construction of waste work in South Korea," Hyojin Pak, Leiden University

Discussant: Sunyoung Park, University of Southern California

Dinner at Casa Fedman (9 Cervantes Ct., Irvine, CA, 92617, on UC Irvine's Campus)