Author: Yurim Oh

The Korea Society’s Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Award was established in 2017 through the generous support of Mr. and Mrs. Philp Sherman and family. Its primary goal is to encourage U.S. thought leadership on Korea among a new generation. The award is presented across disciplines to emerging thought leaders, from Ph.D. candidates to junior professors, researchers and professionals. Immediately below you can view the presentations of former award winners.

The annual competition opens in early spring each year.

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Presentations by Sherman Scholar Lecture Award Recipients

2025 LECTURE

Reframing Suicide as a Shared Social Responsibility in Korea 
Dr. Peter Jongho Na 

Assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Peter Jongho Na, was awarded the nineth annual Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture. In his lecture, Reframing Suicide as a Shared Social Responsibility in Korea, he casts suicide not as an individual failure or “extreme choice (극단적 선택),” but as a systemic and cultural crisis requiring a coordinated national response. Drawing on his experience as a psychiatrist, public health researcher, and mental health advocate, he examines the scale and societal costs of suicide in Korea and analyzes key structural drivers such as academic and workplace pressures, poverty and isolation among older adults, and the pervasive stigma surrounding mental illness and treatment. A central theme is how stigma has sustained silence, denial, and policy inertia. Dr. Peter Jongho Na shares his efforts to challenge euphemistic language and foster open public dialogue, while proposing an interdisciplinary roadmap inspired by global models that integrate public health, education, and social welfare reforms. Further, he highlights the Korean diaspora’s potential role in breaking taboos and advancing cultural and policy change, underscoring that suicide prevention must be embraced as a collective, societal responsibility.

 

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2024 LECTURE

The Politics of The Silence of Love in Colonial Korea ||
with David Krolikoski

University of Hawai’I assistant professor, Dr. David Krolikoski, was awarded the eighth annual Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture. He examined The Silence of Love (Nim ŭi ch’immuk, 1926), the acclaimed collection of eighty-eight poems by Han Yong-un (1879-1944), a Buddhist monk and public intellectual. Although the book is commonly celebrated as a metaphor for colonial subjugation, Dr. Krolikoski complicated this established reading to argue that its artistic significance lies in Han’s paradigm-shifting use of colonial poetry as a medium of communal expression during a time of national crisis. He explored how Han used fiction and symbols to collapse the boundary between private and public address, transmuting the individual voice of his poetic speaker into a platform for a community. Further, he contextualized The Silence of Love within the history of the translation of foreign poetic forms into Korea during the 1920s, with a focus on how Han incorporated elements from the lyric and prose poem into his verse.

 

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2023 LECTURE

The Return of Industrial Policy: Lessons from Korea ||
with Munseob Lee

The Korea Society is pleased to announce that the winner of the 7th Annual Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Competition is Dr. Munseob Lee, Assistant Professor at the University of California San Diego. Dr. Lee will address The Return of Industrial Policy: Lessons from Korea.

Industrial policy is making a comeback. Signs of government intervention in support of industry are visible not only in China, but in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Drawing lessons learned from Korea’s experience, Lee provides important insights for today’s policy-makers. A notable case to be discussed is the Korean government’s implementation of the heavy and chemical industry drive in 1973. While that policy yielded positive outcomes for the targeted industries, it also resulted in a higher concentration within those sectors.

Lee emphasizes the intricate nature of industrial policy and stresses the need for a thorough evaluation of its costs and benefits before implementation, especially now given the current bipartisan support for substantial bills in the U.S. aimed at revitalizing industrial policy. As one reviewer stated, “At this critical time Lee revisits the effectiveness of Korean industrial policy during a high development phase to glean useful insights for Korea, U.S., and beyond.” The Lecture is moderated by Thomas Byrne, President and CEO of The Korea Society.

 

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2022 LECTURE

National Identity Affirmation and Trust in Korea, Japan and China ||
with Eunbin Chung

University of Utah Assistant Professor of Political Science, Dr. Eunbin Chung, addressed National Identity and Trust in Korea, Japan and China from a unique perspective. Legacies of conflict and distrust have made it difficult for East Asian countries to form regional institutions and overcome security dilemmas. Chung’s research questions two conventional wisdoms related to these regional dynamics: 1) that distrust among states can be overcome through cultural convergence and appealing to a shared identity and 2) that strong, inward-focused national identities exacerbate inter-state distrust and conflict. Chung’s research advances the concept that trust not only can be built among nations when each affirms its own distinctive identity, but that this approach may be more effective than embracing common identities across different countries. Dr. Katrin Katz, the inaugural Sherman Family Lecture Award recipient, described Chung’s argument as “breaking new ground in tackling some prevailing beliefs regarding the relationship between national identity and levels of inter-state trust and conflict. Dr. Chung’s work entails a hopeful message for East Asia and beyond: that emphasizing the favorable and distinctive traits of one’s own country need not lead to antagonistic relations with neighbors.”

 

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2021 LECTURE

Korea’s Changing National Story and Democratic Future||
with Aram Hur

University of Missouri Assistant Professor and Institute for Korean Studies Co-Director Aram Hur, the fifth annual Sherman Family Scholar Lecture Award recipient, spoke to Korea’s Changing National Story and Democratic Future. Hur addressed Korean nationalism, a “rapidly fragmenting and changing” national story, and the danger of democratic rollback. Senior director Stephen Noerper described Hur’s selection and address as “incredibly important given the costs of such fragmentation in Korea, but comparatively in the United States of late and by extension to a world seeing rollback in Myanmar, Thailand, Russia and elsewhere.” 

 

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2020 LECTURE

Architecture as Kisul in Postwar Korea: Building the Industrial Nation-State: 2020 Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture||
with Melany Sun-Min Park

Ms. Sun-Min Park, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and the fourth annual Sherman Family Scholar Lecture Award recipient, discussed Architecture as Kisul (Science-Technology) in Postwar Korea: Building the Industrial Nation-State. Ms. Park addressed architecture’s relationship to state-led, large-scale industrial development in post-war Korea. Carter Eckert, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History at Harvard University, described Park’s effort as a “brilliantly conceived project combining…histories and cultural issues with an exploration of science/industrialism and aesthetics…in South Korea.” Harvard Professor Yukio Lippit hailed Park for her original “use of archives never tapped for use in any language.” 

 

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2019 LECTURE

P’ansori Mountain Pilgrimages: Land as Interlocutor in Contemporary Korean Oral Performance and Literature||
with Ivanna Sang Een Yi

Dr. Ivanna Sang Een Yi, University of Colorado Boulder Visiting Assistant Professor and the third annual Sherman Family Scholar Lecture Award recipient, addressed P’ansori Mountain Pilgrimages: Land as Interlocutor in Contemporary Korean Oral Performance and Literature. In a presentation both spoken and sung, Professor Yi conceptualized the contemporary practice of p’ansori san kongbu, mountain study, as a form of pilgrimage. 

 

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2018 LECTURE AWARD

Imagining the Impossible: The DMZ as a Productive Territory||
with Dongsei Kim

Architect and educator Dongsei Kim, Assistant Professor at the New York Institute of Technology and recipient of the second annual Sherman Family Scholar Lecture Award, explored how the discipline of architecture and landscape architecture investigates the Demilitarized Zone. Through the prism of spatial design and with three concrete examples, Professor Kim argued for a reformulation of exclusionary border conditions into inclusive spaces that become synergistic and productive for both Koreas. 

 

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2017 LECTURE AWARD

Maritime Conflict in Northeast Asia and Nationalism in Korea||
with Katrin Katz

The Korea Society celebrated sixty years since its founding with a public and press presentation on September 27 by Katrin Katz of Northwestern University. Dr. Katz served on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. The Korea Society selected Dr. Katz, whose dissertation addresses maritime conflict in Northeast Asia and the dynamics of nationalism in Korea, as the recipient of the initial Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Series asward, which encourages new American thought leadership on Korea. The award enjoys the kind support of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Sherman and family. Mr. Sherman served as Citi representative in Korea in the early 1970s.

 

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