December 12, 2005 

The History of Korea provides a review of Korea's history from a Korean perspective, beginning from its roots in Neolithic civilization and the tradition and evolution of nation building in the traditional East Asian world system, through Korea's global setting in modern times. A timeline is followed by chapters on early history, Korean identity, medieval Korea, Korean tradition and modernization, and Japanese dominion. A biographical section highlighting famous figures in Korea, a glossary of selected terms, and a bibliographical essay are also included. The author of the book, Djun Kil Kim, used the opportunity afforded by this VOICES program to sketch the broad outlines of his perspective noting that his primary objective in the book is to present Korea not as subservient to its two powerful neighbors, Japan and China, but rather as an independent player determining its own destiny. Kim is currently teaching and conducting research at Myongji University in Seoul. The passion he brings to his subject is deeply rooted in the more than two decades he spent as a Korean government official working on media and cultural affairs as well as international public diplomacy.

May 11, 2005 

Hwang Sun-won's 1960 novel Trees on a Slope follows three South Korean soldiers during and after the Korean War. They are caught up in the brutal, final battles before the 1953 armistice and then do sentry duty along the truce line; when they are demobilized, they have to find a place in society and come to terms with their war experiences. The sensitive Tong-ho, nicknamed "Poet", dreams about his girlfriend and refuses to drink or sleep with prostitutes - until he starts to come apart under the stress. At the other extreme, the hard-boiled Hyon-t'ae displays extreme callousness towards women, but still finds himself haunted by his actions during the war. Only the pragmatic and resourceful Yon-gu-who has managed to survive capture by the Chinese and escape-finds his footing in peacetime. And then there's Tong-ho's girlfriend Sugi, who seeks out his friends to try to understand what happened to him, and sergeant Sonu, who's Christianity fails to keep him from madness. The novel also offers a fascinating glimpse of post-war Korean life. Trees on a Slope was translated into English by Bruce Fulton, the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation at the University of British Columbia, and his wife Ju-Chan Fulton. In this VOICES program, Fulton read excerpts from their translation and described Hwang Sun-won's significance as one of the few Korean novelists to write about the war.

April 5-7, 2005 

The Korea Society was one of the sponsors of a two day conference, hosted by Harvard's Korea Institute, which was aimed at helping to bring Koguryo-based studies to the English-speaking world. Despite in-depth research done through Asian universities, only a handful of articles on the early Korean kingdom have appeared in Western literature, leaving students and teachers of East Asian history with a substantial academic blind spot. The conference addressed this shortcoming by bringing together experts from South Korea, Japan, China, Australia, France and the U.S. who shared their expertise in more than a dozen lectures and panel discussions. Topics ranged from early Koguryo history to the archaeology of Koguryo capitals to the preservation of Koguryo mural tombs in North Korea. The conference was organized by Mark Byington, post-doctoral fellow, Korea Institute, Harvard University.

March 1, 2005 

This lecture described the unique characteristics of han'gul, the alphabet many consider to be one of the treasures of Korea. Drawing on a commentary that accompanied the original 1446 proclamation of the han'gul alphabet, which was discovered in 1940, Lee Sang-Oak, a professor of language and literature at Seoul National University, illustrated the relationships between the shape of the letters and the corresponding positions of the tongue, throat, lips and teeth when the sounds the letters represent are produced. He argued that the scientifically sound nature of these relationships establishes han'gul as a true alphabet: one with optimally designed symbols for each consonant and vowel in the Korean language.