I organized a panel that explores how the meanings and practices of belonging and social movement have been reassembled and rearticulated in contemporary South Korea and the Korean diaspora. Our collective question concerns the ways different social actors navigate an ongoing crisis of the global capitalist, heteropatriarchal, environmental, and postcolonial present. Specifically, how do the increasing forms of precarity produced by this crisis call for a rearticulation of belonging as a legal and cultural membership? What are the intersections and limits of interchangeability among each perspective? Drawing from approaches in performance studies, cultural anthropology, and ethnic studies, this interdisciplinary panel contributes to expanding the critical dialogue in Korean studies at large. Based on rich ethnographic research conducted in South Korea, Canada, and the United States, the papers illustrate possible tensions and the challenged isomorphism among identity, justice, and hierarchical (and oppressive) nationhood. Topics include: online activist work on transgender visibility and care by a transgender couple and their allies in gender affirming healthcare (Lee); environmental activism addressing the colonial dichotomies between the land and the island in Jeju (Shin); Korean diaspora’s support for the families of the Sewol Ferry disaster victims and identity reformation (Jeong); and undocumented Korean immigrant youth activism for abolitionist future (Chung). Each panelist analyzes the dynamic relations of the components of belonging–law, culture, and rights–and how they intersect with other markers such as gender, sexuality, class, and legal status.

Rather than framing fans primarily as consumers of K-pop, this talk explores how fan practices constitute a central productive force, shaping not only K-pop’s explosive global popularity but also K-pop’s cultural and social impacts and horizons of possibility, which includes its cultural politics. In particular, I argue that K-pop fans perform a kind of materialization of affective labor, which can be seen in diverse processes, from generalized, collective, and communal fan activities to de-centralized, individually specific labor that represents individual fan’s personalities and performances of care. This study combines insights from ethnography, cultural studies, fan studies, media studies, and performance studies, while also drawing on my own research as a participant-observer and co-performer witness whenever I was able. This talk begins by showing how fandom practices have shifted over time, transforming a youth subculture into a global phenomenon, then brings to fore the integration of labor in studying performances of fandom, and discusses the ways that performing fan labor intersects with neoliberal capitalist structures but can also deviate or depart from the industry’s norms and goals. In addition, this talk questions what it means for K-pop to become “mainstream” in the US.

I will present my paper “Performing Collaborative Public Counter-Memory: The Jeju 4.3 in Korean Theatre and Performance” at the 2024 Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference. The research examines how theatrical performances document, remember, and represent the Jeju 4.3 and how the performative strategies of these works resist the official records.

K-pop’s success in Korea and around the world would not have been possible without the creative contributions of enthusiastic, diverse, and seemingly ever-growing fandoms. Combining insights from ethnography, cultural studies, fan studies, media studies, and performance studies, while also drawing on their own research as a participant-observer, four K-pop aca-fans will discuss some of the fan activities that influence the business of K-pop and its cultural significance, the changes in K-pop fan activities post-pandemic, and also tips on how to participate healthily.

I will give a talk on the recent influx of K-Pop and the Korean Wave in the United States at the “New Perspectives on the 70 Years of the Korean-U.S. Alliance” event sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Los Angeles in partnership with the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and the Asia Center at Arizona State University.

I will present on how to give effective job talks at the SILC Graduate Workshop at Arizona State University.

I will give a talk on K-pop at the “Lights, Camera, Action!: Korean Popular Culture” event of the 2023 Humanities Week at Arizona State University.

I will give a talk on contemporary Korean cinema at the “K-Culture: Korean History/Culture Seminar” organized/sponsored by the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles and Arizona State University.

I will attend the AAS-in-Asia conference for two panels: I will present my research on Sewol theatre and performance on the “Cultural Memory on the Move: Drawing, Singing, Performing, and Streaming from South Korea” panel and I will serve as a discussant on the “Asian Arts and Societies in Motion—Case Studies from SE-Asia, China, and Japan” panel. The conference will take place from June 24 to 27, 2023 at Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea.

I will present my research on activist performances that animate the material remains of the Sewol Ferry disaster in the service of materializing truth and redress at the 1st Humanities Korea Conference hosted by the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Specifically, I will talk about how these performances utilize objects that materialize both the victims’ individual and collective lives and the ongoing impacts of the loss of these victims on specific families and communities. The conference will take place on April 28, 2023 at the University of Pennsylvania.

I will present my research on the Sewol mothers’ activism at the “Feminist Art, Korea/Asia” panel of the Afro-Latinx-Queer-Korea-Asia in the Arts Symposium (ALQKAAS) hosted by the Art Department at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, funded by the Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) of the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Specifically, I will talk about how the Sewol mothers extend representations of motherhood activism in Korea, expressing positive energy as active resistance through craft workshops and theatrical performances. The symposium will take place on April 22 and 23, 2023 from 1 pm to 6 pm via Zoom.

As the 2023 Rooney Scholar at Robert Morris University, I will give a university-wide lecture on activist theatre and performance in South Korea. Specifically, I will talk about Korean activists and artists have sought to memorialize not only the Sewol Ferry disaster and its victims, but also demand government accountability and legal redress through theatre and performance. The lecture will take place on March 22, 2023 from 4 pm to 5 pm at Robert Morris University’s Wheatley Atrium.

I will present my research on visual memorials that commemorate the Sewol Ferry disaster at the American Comparative Literature Association’s 2023 annual meeting’s “Mapping Memories of Violence: Role of Visual Texts in Mnemopolitics” seminar. The conference will take place from March 16 to 19, 2023 at the Sheraton Grand Riverwalk in Chicago, Illinois.