Hello,
The Department of Sociology holds three to four colloquiums each semester to explore research trends in domestic and international sociology and to foster academic dialogue between professors and graduate students.
For our first colloquium of this year, we are honored to invite Professor Joonghyun Kwak from Trinity College Dublin and Professor Pil Ho Kim from Ohio State University to share their accumulated research achievements and current areas of interest. We warmly welcome all interested members of the university community to actively participate.
[2025 Spring – 1st Seoul National University Sociology Colloquium]
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Topic: The Impact of Meritocratic Culture: Declining Trust in Political Institutions and Rising Right-wing Populism from World Value Surveys
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Date & Time: June 5, 2025 (Thursday), 13:00 - 14:30
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Venue: Room 427, Building 16 / Zoom
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Speakers: Joonghyun Kwak (Trinity College Dublin), Pil Ho Kim (Ohio State University)
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Moderator: Dongkyun Lim (Professor, Department of Sociology, Seoul National University)
※ This event will be conducted in both in-person and online formats.
(Zoom Link: https://snu-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/
※ Sandwiches and coffee will be provided to on-site attendees on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Presentation Abstract
Like many other countries, South Korea is grappling with the issues of fairness and justice in terms of economic opportunity and social stratification. Meritocracy, an ideology that touts individual talent and hard work as the key to success, is facing increasing public skepticism, as evidenced by the results of the World Values Survey over the span of two decades since 1996. As the same survey results show, public belief in meritocracy rises or falls in tandem with distrust of political institutions dominated by the supposedly meritocratic elite and experts. While scholars such as Michael Sandel argue that rising belief in meritocracy and declining public trust in political institutions would lead to the rise of right-wing populism as seen in the U.S. in recent years, it is not clear whether the same trend holds true in other cases, including Korea. In this paper, we examine how meritocratic culture is related to public distrust in political institutions by analyzing the accumulated data from the World Values Survey. Our findings reveal a more complicated picture, in which the political impact of meritocratic culture depends on both individual- and country-level variables such as income and economic security.
- Speaker Introduction
Joonghyun Kwak will join Trinity College Dublin as an Assistant Professor in Sociology in August 2025. His research interests include globalization, sustainable development, and social inequality. Currently, his work focuses on three main areas: (1) international student mobility and its link to sustainable development, (2) social mobility and international migration, and (3) the backlash against globalization, including democratic backsliding, populism, and political distrust. Kwak earned his PhD in Sociology from the University of Connecticut and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at The Ohio State University, the University of Essex, and the University of Oxford.
Pil Ho Kim is Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching cover a wide range of topics related to modern Korea, including popular music, cinema, urban culture, and social polarization. He is the author of Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2024) and co-editor of South Korean Development Experience: Beyond Aid (with Eun Mee Kim, Palgrave, 2014). His next book project is on the trans-Pacific cultural impact of Black freedom movements on modern Korean history.