Samul nori, the South Korean percussion genre with powerful rhythmic forms, has reached international popularity. First created in Seoul in 1978 by a quartet of musicians, samul nori (which translates simply into “four things play”) is a neo-traditional musical repertory that has been performed on many international stages by professional ensembles and amateur musical enthusiasts around the world.
Professor Katherine In-Young Lee explores the history and development of samul nori and its importance as a sonic and cultural symbol of South Korea.
Samul Nori: Dynamic Rhythms from Korea Thursday, April 22, 2021 | 6 PM (EDT)
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Katherine In-Young Lee is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Her book Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form (Wesleyan University Press 2018), explores how a percussion genre from South Korea became a global music genre. It was recognized with the 2019 Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology from the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards. Her articles have appeared in Ethnomusicology, the Journal of Korean Studies, and The Journal of Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Professor Lee received her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Harvard University; M.A. in Ethnomusicology from University of Washington; and dual B.M. degrees in Piano Performance and Musicology from the University of Michigan.
The Kim Koo Professional Series, now in its twelfth iteration, brings together 8-10 senior director level professionals three times over three weeks for special one hour sessions featuring thought leaders on Asia. The spring 2021 session is April 8, 15 and 22 from 4-5 PM EST, by Zoom.
Joining us with comments and for discussion are Dr. Sue Mi Terry of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (April 5), Professor Alexis Dudden of the University of Connecticut (April 15), and Dr. Sonja Bachmann of the United Nations (April 22). All speakers will address Thinking Asia, with focus on their approach.
Dr. Terry will delve into North Korean analysis, Professor Dudden on the impasse in Korea-Japan relations, and Dr. Bachmann on international organization approaches to Northeast Asia problem solving. Each session affords active dialogue, and a rich networking opportunity.
U.S. Representative Young Kim (CA-39) joins The Korea Society to share her journey in becoming one of the first Korean American women elected to Congress in its 230-year history. As an immigrant, small business owner, and previous California State 65th district Assemblywoman, we will explore how Congresswoman Kim pursued the American dream to become a successful Korean American leader and politician.
The conversation will be moderated by Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. Ambassador to Korea and Korea Society Board Chair. Thomas Byrne, President and CEO of The Korea Society will deliver a special welcoming remarks at the event.
Women in Congress: A Conversation with U.S. Representative Young Kim
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 | 6:15 PM EDT
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Hon.Young Kim Congresswoman U.S. Representative for California’s 39th Congressional District
Congresswoman Young Kim is proud to represent California’s 39th District, which includes parts of Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties, in the U.S. House of Representatives.
An immigrant, small business owner, community leader, and mother, Young is proud to be one of the first Korean-American women ever to serve in Congress and help all Americans have the chance to achieve their dream just like she did.
As an immigrant to the United States, Young has dedicated her life to giving back to her community. She started her public service as Director of Community Relations and Asian Affairs for former Congressman Ed Royce (CA-39), where she was a key liaison to 39th District and advisor on issues pertaining to the Asian-American community and foreign policy.
Prior to serving in Congress, Young was the first ever Korean-American Republican woman to serve in the California State Assembly. As an Assemblywoman, Young fought to grow jobs , support small businesses, ensure public safety, promote educational opportunities, support veterans, and protect victims of domestic violence.
Young is a small business owner, a long-time community leader, and has been actively involved in numerous organizations throughout the 39th District. She and her husband Charles reside in La Habra and are the proud parents of four grown children – Christine, Kelly, Alvin, and Hannah.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR:
Amb. Kathleen Stephens Chair, Board of Directors, The Korea Society President & CEO, Korea Economic Institute
Ambassador (ret.) Kathleen Stephens is a former American diplomat. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011. Korea has been a leit motif of Ambassador Stephens’ life and career since she served in rural Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer, 1975-1977. She was in Korea 1983-1989, first as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul reporting on Korea’s domestic political and human rights scene, and later leading the U.S. Consulate in Busan.
Other overseas assignments included postings to China, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Charge ‘d Affaires (2014-2015).
Ambassador Stephens also served in a number of policy positions in Washington at the Department of State and the White House. These included acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House.
Stephens was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University 2015-2018. She is a Mansfield Foundation Distinguished Fellow, Pacific Century Institute board chairman, vice-chair of the board of trustees for The Asia Foundation, and board chair of The Korea Society.
She has been President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute of America since September 2018, based in Washington, DC.
Join us for a discussion on regional roles in building inter-Korean peace and unification with Columbia University adjunct professor Katrin Fraser Katz, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior research analyst Kathryn Botto, and Columbia University adjunct professor, Weatherhead East Asian Institute research scholar and Society senior director Stephen Noerper. Policy director Jonathan Corrado moderates the discussion, which enjoys the support of the UniKorea Foundation. Columbia University’s Center for Korean Research (CKR) partners for this exciting discussion.
The Columbia University’s Center for Korean Research (CKR) is a promotional partner for this program.
Role of Regional Players in Inter-Korean Peace and Unification with Katrin Fraser Katz, Kathryn Botto and Stephen Noerper
Friday, April 16, 2021 | 12 PM
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Katrin Fraser Katz is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and an Adjunct Fellow (Non-resident) in the Office of the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. Dr. Katz’s research, which has been supported by grants from the Korea Foundation and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, explores the interplay of cooperation and conflict in East Asia’s political, economic, and security dynamics. She has taught in the Asian Studies Program at Georgetown University and was a 2018-19 US-Korea NextGen Scholar. In 2017, she received the inaugural Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Series award from the Korea Society. Dr. Katz served as director for Japan, Korea, and oceanic affairs on the staff of the White House National Security Council from 2007 to 2008. She was also a special assistant to the assistant secretary for international organization affairs at the U.S. Department of State and an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University; a master’s degree in East Asian and international security studies from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she was awarded the John C. Perry Scholarship for East Asian Studies; and a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in international relations and Japanese from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kathryn Botto is a senior research analyst in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on Asian security issues, with particular emphasis on the Korean Peninsula and U.S. defense policy towards East Asia. Botto’s research interests also include alliance management, defense policy making in select Asian nations, and trilateral cooperation between the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Before joining Carnegie in July 2018, Botto was a research associate in the Strategy Division of the U.S. Forces Korea, Combined Forces Command, and United Nations Command. Previously, she was a research fellow at the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies.
Stephen Noerper has led public policy programs at the Korea Society for twelve years and taught on Korea for a half decade at Columbia University’s Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs. He has been a Weatherhead East Asian Institute research scholar and has advised the United Nations program to support cooperation in Northeast Asia. Dr. Noerper served prior with the EastWest Institute, New York University, Intellibridge, US State Department, and US Defense Department’s Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. He was a visiting fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii and resident representative for the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development in Washington, DC. He was a visiting professor at Japan’s Waseda University and the National University of Mongolia, where he was a Fulbright senior scholar teaching on Korea. He was a visiting fellow at Korea’s Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security. Dr. Noerper has authored more than seventy publications on Korea and Northeast Asia and appeared on Arirang, the ABC, BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, CNN, MSNBC, NHK, NPR and VOA and in The Wall Street Journal and Korean and US print. He has served on three philanthropic boards and received Mongolia’s State Friendship medal. He is a member of the National Committee on North Korea and a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and London School of Economics. Dr. Noerper has lectured on Korea across Asia, Europe, Eurasia and the United States.
Once considered a dubious cuisine relegated to the “ethnic food” category, Korean food is now hotter than ever in the United States and beyond. Ingredients like gochugaru and gochujang show up on menus of American fast food chains and local grocery aisles, while Korean cooking shows and meokbang videos have become a genre of their own on streaming platforms and social media, such as Netflix and YouTube. Today, KFC also stands for Korean Fried Chicken and the noodle dish jjapaguri from the Oscar-winning movie Parasite has its own Wikipedia entry.
Professor Robert Ji-Song Ku explores the rising popularity, appreciation, and appropriation of Korean food around the world and particularly in the United States, and its relationship to the global proliferation of Korean popular culture, a phenomenon commonly known as hallyu, the Korean Wave.
Hot! Hot! Hot! Korean Food in the Age of Kpop
Thursday, April 8, 2021 | 6 PM (EDT)
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Robert Ji-Song Ku is Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University of the State University of New York. His research and teaching interests include Asian American studies, food studies, and transnational and diasporic Korean popular culture. He is the author of Dubious Gastronomy: Eating Asian in the USA (University of Hawaii Press, 2014) and co-editor of Future Yet to Come: Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Modern Korea (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming 2021), Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2019), and Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (New York University Press, 2013).
Stimson Center senior fellow and China Program director Yun Sun and Asia Society Arthur Ross director of the Center for US-China Relations Orville Schell join senior director Stephen Noerper to discuss where Korea sits relative to China and US priorities. They explore China policy in the new US administration, alliances and expectations, and prospects for improvements or further deterioration in Sino-US ties. This program is made possible thanks to the support of the Korea Foundation.
Korea and Sino-US Relations with Orville Schell and Yun Sun
Thursday, April 1, 2021 | 1 PM
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s Long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s. He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Yun Sun is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program at the Stimson Center. Her expertise is in Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations and China’s relations with neighboring countries and authoritarian regimes. From 2011 to early 2014, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, jointly appointed by the Foreign Policy Program and the Global Development Program, where she focused on Chinese national security decision-making processes and China-Africa relations. From 2008 to 2011, Yun was the China Analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Beijing, specializing on China’s foreign policy towards conflict countries and the developing world.
Yul Kwon, Google Senior Director of Product Management and the first Asian American winner of the CBS reality show Survivor, will join the Society to share his diverse career trajectories in product management, technology, law, and media. Yul has worked with major government agencies and private companies including Google, Facebook, the Federal Communications Commission, the US Senate, McKinsey, and PBS. As the first Asian American winner of the CBS reality TV show ‘Survivor’, he will also discuss how he used that platform to voice what it means to be a Korean American in today’s age.
The Korea Society is excited to present this Young Professionals’ Network webcast in partnership with the Council of Korean Americans (CKA). CKA is a national nonprofit organization seeking to advance the national voice and influence of the Korean American community through collaboration and leadership development.
Young Professional’s Network “Surviving” the Professional World – Advice from Yul Kwon
Premieres: Friday, March 26, 2021 | 6:30 PM EDT
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Yul Kwon Senior Director, Product Management Google
Yul Kwon is Senior Director of Product Management and Chief-of-Staff to the Chief Legal Officer at Google, where he was the product lead for Google’s Exposure Notifications (i.e., digital contract tracing) project in partnership with Apple.
Yul’s earlier private sector experiences include working as a Director of Product Management at Facebook, a management consultant at McKinsey, an attorney at Venture Law Group, and the owner/operator of Red Mango frozen yogurt retail stores.
In the public sector, Yul’s government experiences include serving as Deputy Chief of the FCC’s Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, an adjunct instructor at the FBI Academy, a legislative counsel in the U.S Senate, and a judicial clerk in the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yul hosted the PBS series, America Revealed, and anchored KCETLink’s weekly news program, LinkAsia, from 2011-2013. His other work on television includes hosting programs for CNN, Discovery Channel, and Smithsonian Channel. In 2006, Yul became the first Asian American winner of the CBS reality show, Survivor. He returned in 2020 to participate in the 40th season of Survivor, Winners at War.
Yul received his B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served on the editorial board of the Yale Law Journal.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR:
Julie Chang TV journalist & Storyteller
Emmy nominated and AP Journalism award winner Julie Chang has been waking up folks in New York and Los Angeles for more than 17 years. She recently left the morning TV grind to focus on developing a docuseries called, “940”. The program accentuates the 940 weekends from the time your child is born till they go to college, and how we can all make the most of that time! Julie is also jumping into the scripted side! Look for her in the upcoming movie The Way of the Warriors. Julie is also a brain tumor survivor who has a unique perspective on living your best life. Anyone who follows her on instagram (@trulyjuliechang) knows that is the soul of Julie content creations. Julie resides in Marina Del Rey with her two kids and husband. They are infatuated with beach life and are active conservationists. Yup, even her 2-year-old has her own trash picker-upper.
There is a long and illustrious history of fermentation in Korean cuisine. Different types of fermented food – doenjang, ganjang, gochujang, and kimchi to name just a few – are integral and essential to the Korean way of eating and cooking.
Join Irene Yoo as she provides an overview of Korean art of fermentation and tips on how to incorporate Korean fermented food in your everyday cooking.
The Korean Art of Fermentation
Thursday, March 25, 2021 | 6 PM (EDT)
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Irene Yoo is the founder/chef of Yooeating, a Korean American comfort food popup that highlights Korean home-cooking, street food, and drinking culture. She has written and developed recipes for Food52, Food Network, and Gothamist among many others.
The Korea Society is enormously concerned about the shocking increase of anti-Asian hate incidents around the country which have accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. These incidents have ranged from verbal harassment and racial slurs to assault and murderous acts.
The Asian-American community is rightly concerned about their safety and the safety of their loved ones. We stand with all Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific-Islander communities in condemning racially motivated acts of hatred and violence.
Along with many Americans throughout the country, The Korea Society is shaken by the recent tragedy in Atlanta where eight persons were murdered—six of whom were Asian, including four women of Korean origin.
The Korea Society will always stand together with the Asian-American community. Our mission since the Society’s inception 63 years ago has been to enhance cross-cultural awareness and understanding. We will endeavor even more so to promote a more respectful and inclusive society here in the U.S.
Michael D. Shin, a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, looks at the late Joseon period and the Japanese colonial period to examine the historical causes of Korean division and investigate their impact on inter-Korean reconciliation in this program supported by the UniKorea Foundation. Understanding the deep historical causes of Korean division sheds light on the persistence of the division after the end of the Cold War.
This program is supported by a grant from the UniKorea Foundation.
The Historical Causes of Korea’s Division and Challenges to Reconciliation
with Michael D. Shin
Thursday, March 18, 2021 | 12 PM
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Michael D. Shin is a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. He is the author of Korean National Identity under Japanese Colonial Rule (Routledge), the editor and co-author of Korean History in Maps (Cambridge University Press), and the editor and co-translator of Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society (Global Oriental, Brill).
