2022 Korea Update

Presented by ANU College of Asia & the Pacific

The ANU Korea Update is the University's flagship annual conference on Korea. This year's Korea Update is introducing a hybrid format. The ANU Korea Institute is bringing together academics from all over the world to talk about all things Korea, whilst also presenting the event online. We are lucky enough to have esteemed economist Ruediger Frank deliver the opening keynote, and renowned cultural geographer Judy Han deliver the closing keynote.

Spread across two days, the 2022 Korea Update is a public event bringing together key representatives from the academic and policymaking communities to discuss current socio-cultural, political, diplomatic, gender and security issues related to the Korean peninsula.

Keynotes

North Korea after Ukraine

Professor Ruediger Frank , University of Vienna

Monday 21 November 5pm-6pm

It is difficult to think of any country that would be unaffected by the armed conflict in Ukraine and its geopolitical and geoeconomic consequences. However, in the case of North Korea, these effects go far beyond quantitative changes such as inflation, reduced energy security, or increased defense budgets. Rather, they are of a substantial and qualitative nature. The Ukraine conflict has become a catalyst of events that lead the world into a new Cold War and, once again, facilitate the formation of two antagonistic blocs.

This keynote will outline some of the key changes and show that they make many of the North Korea related discussions among academics and analysts in the past two decades irrelevant, and in fact require a complete reorganisation of the debate.

Queer throughlines: Activist lines and uneven geometries in South Korea and the diaspora

Assitant Professor Judy Han, UCLA

Tuesday 22 November 4.30pm-5.30pm

Queer and trans activists in South Korea-alternatively referred to as iban, sexual minority, or LGBTQ+ activists-have made important political and policy gains, and their visibility has grown significantly over the last two decades. They continue to face, however, deep-seated heterosexism and dismissiveness from liberals as well as intense political hostility especially from religious conservatives.

The fraught space of evangelical Christianity in particular has been an especially crucial site for queer politics, both as a key source of antipathy as well as a wellspring of support and allyship. Tracing a transnational account through these contentious political spaces of queer and trans activisms in South Korea and the Korean diaspora in the United States.

In this keynote Judy Han discusses how they have crisscrossed and intertwined with each other as well as adjacent movements and social forces. Considering these lines of engagement and relationality through a spatial lens, she suggests a more capacious and ambivalent conceptualisation of linearity.

VENUE

The conference will be held in hybrid mode, i.e., in-person on ANU Campus, and virtually on Zoom.

For full program and other details please visit here.

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