August 23 (Friday): Conference Day 1

9:30-10:00 Opening Ceremony
Moderator: Hyeong-ki Kwon (Professor and Director, SNU Contemporary Korean Studies, Seoul National University)
Welcome address: Honglim Ryu (President, Seoul National University)

10:00-11:50 Session 1: Reimagining Korea: Identity and Values in a Changing World and Korea in Transition
Presentation 1: Grace Kao (Yale University, USA), “K-Pop’s Place on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart”
Presentation 2: Liora Sarfati (Tel Aviv University, Israel), “The Cosmopolitan Vernacular: Korean Shamans (Mudang) in the Global Spirituality Market”
Presentation 3: Merose Hwang (Hiram College, USA), “The Ethics of Grief: Reflections on Recent Youth Deaths in South Korea”

13:00-15:00 Session 2: Political Economy from a Comparative-Historical Perspective
Presentation 1: Stephen Haggard (University of California, San Diego, USA), “Lineages of the Developmental State: New Evidence, New Policies”
Presentation 2: Yong Chool Ha (University of Washington, USA), “Distinctiveness of South Korea’s Modernization: Tradition as a Bridge Between Political Economy and Sociology”
Presentation 3: Keun Lee (Seoul National University) & Djun Kil Kim (Seoul National University), “Compressed Development, Decompression, and Diverging Convergence in South Korea: Which Varieties of Capitalism in Contemporary Korea?”
Presentation 4: Elizabeth Thurbon (University of New South Wales, Australia) & Alexander M. Hynd (University of New South Wales, Australia), “Green Energy Statecraft in the Indo-Pacific: New Rules at the Techno-Industrial Frontier”
Presentation 5: Yin-wah Chu (Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong), “The Developmental States of South Korea and Taiwan: Core features and divergent trajectories”
Presentation 6: Jaeyong Song (Seoul National University), “Evolution of Technology Sourcing Strategies of Korean Electronics Companies: The case of Samsung Electronics”
Presentation 7: Kyung Mi Kim (Seoul National University) & Hyeong-ki Kwon (Seoul National University), “Divergent Evolution of Statist Coordination Models: A Comparison of Japan and Korea”

15:10-17:00 Session 3: The Masterplots of K-Narrative
Presentation 1: Spencer Lee-Lenfield (Harvard University, USA), “How the Korean Diaspora Became the Dominant Force in Korean-English Literary Translation”
Presentation 2: Hannah Kim (Arizona University, USA), “The Unexpected Perils of Pervasive Story Telling”
Presentation 3: Shin Hyoung Cheol (Seoul National University), “For a Fair Re(dis)tribution of Pain: Meritocracy and Vigilantism in K-Narrative”
Presentation 4: Youkyung Son (Seoul National University), “When Korean Literature Encounters ‘K’: Exploring the (Dis)Harmony between Korean and ‘K’ Literature”
Presentation 5: Hyeongguk Song (Korean Broadcasting System), “(De)Globalization and Transformation of the Masterplot in K-Cinema”
Presentation 6: Kyung Hee Youn (Seoul National University), “Accompanying the Specters: Fictional Narratives about the Sewol Ferry Disaster”

17:10-18:50 Session 4: K-Future
Presentation 1: Kim Hong Jung (Seoul National University), “Toward a Symptomatology of K-future”
Presentation 2: Nathalie Luca (National Center for Scientific Research, Center for Social Research on Religion, France), “What is optimism?”

August 24 (Saturday): Conference Day 2

10:00-11:50 Session 5: Korean Modernity and the History of Development
Presentation 1: Dong-won Lee (Seoul National University), “Introduction: History of Aid and Development in Korea”
Presentation 2: Jong-Chol An (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy), “Continuity and Discontinuity in Korean Developmentalism?: Land Taking Regime during the 1930s-70s”
Presentation 3: Bong-Seok Han (Pukyong National University, South Korea), “The birth of modern Koreans, nutrition, and surplus produce - how the dream of land reform was replaced by taking vitamins.”
Presentation 4: Changkeun Lee (KDI School of Public Policy and Management, South Korea), “Political Democratization and Growing Economic Inequality”
Presentation 5: Hojye Kang (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), “The ‘New Century’ Discourse in North Korea”

13:00-15:00 Session 6: Global Perspectives on Hallyu
Presentation 1: Seok-Kyeong Hong (Seoul National University), “Introduction: Theorizing Hallyu”
Presenation 2: Younghan Cho (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea), “Institutionalizing Hallyu Studies: De-colonial Knowledge Production through the Historical Landscape of East Asian Pop Culture”
Presentation 3: Haekyung Um (University of Liverpool, UK), “When Does the Korean Wave Become Cultural Heritage?: Selective Canonization and Institutionalization of South Korean Popular Culture”
Presentation 4: Sungmin Kim (Hokkaido University, Japan), “Hallyu in Japan: Recategorizing Popular Music and Identities”
Presentation 5: Sojeong Park (Seoul National University), “Decolonizing Beauty?: A Postcolonial Perspective on K-Beauty”

15:10-16:40 Session 7: Exploring Contemporary Korean Music: From Traditional to Classical to K-Pop and Everything in Between
Presentation 1: Anna Yates-Lu (Seoul National University), “Introduction”
Presentation 2: Keith Howard (University of London, UK), “Shifts and Stasis in the Promotion of Kugak: Observing and Interacting with Korean Music, 1979–2024”
Presentation 3: Nancy Yunhwa Rao (Rutgers University, USA), “Classicism and Inter-Asian Collaboration in Contemporary Music”

16:50-18:20 Roundtable Discussion