Dr. Henry Em: When Did Koreans Become Korean? | Korea Deconstructed #041

When did Koreans become Korean? That is the question Dr. Henry Em, Associate Professor of History at Yonsei University, and I started exploring. It wasn’t planned. And it was difficult. But by then end of this, I think we got somewhere. And I got to know Henry more as a person. We’re talking about the creation of nation states, official narratives, the minjok, and actors as the subjects of history. About people. About Kim Ku, about Park Chung-hee, About status and gender in Korean history, post-colonialism, communism, North Korea, and memory and violence. We even talk about K-dramas.

Henry Em (임흥순) is associate professor of Asian Studies at Yonsei University, Underwood International College. He was born in Seoul, grew up in Chicago, and received his BA, MA, and PhD (History, 1995) from the University of Chicago. From 1995 to 2013, he was assistant professor at UCLA and University of Michigan, and associate professor at NYU. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Korea (1998-1999) and Visiting Professor at Centre de Recherches sur la Corée, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (2000). Professor Em began teaching at Yonsei University in 2013. His recent publications include “North Korea as Neighbor: Critical Scholarship on North Korea,” Korea Journal, 61-3 (autumn, 2021), “Christianity, the Cold War, and the Construction of the Republic of Korea,” Korea Journal, 60-4 (winter, 2020), and “Killer Fables: Yun Ch’i-ho, Bourgeois Enlightenment, and the Free Laborer,” Journal of Korean Studies, 25-1 (March, 2020). His book, The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea, was published by Duke University Press in 2013.

Henry’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Enterprise-Sovereignty-Historiography-Asia-Pacific/dp/0822353725

Korea Deconstructed by David Tizzard

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