There is a long tradition in Korea of presenting various performances–singing, instrument playing, and dancing–on one stage. Join us for another enchanting evening of Korean traditional music and dance performances, featuring virtuosos from Korea.
Ga Mu Ak: An Evening of Korean Traditional Music and Dance
Monday, July 1, 2024 | 6:30 PM
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Kim Joungsup (piri) is a performer and conductor who has taught at many universities in Korea, including Ewha Womans University.
Kim Myoseon (dance) was designated as Master Instructor of Seungmu, an Important Intangible Cultural Property of Korea, in 2005. She is Chief Artistic Director of Balim Dance Company and Chair of the Ubong Imaebang Dance Preservation Association.
Choy Jin (gayageum) is Professor of Music Education at Korea National University of Education.
Song Jae Young (pansori) has taught at Provincial Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, Jeonbuk, and is the Cultural Heritage Simcheongga Performing Arts Holder of Jeonbuk Province.
Choi Eunjeong (dance) is a Master of Salpuri, the 20th Important Intangible Cultural Property, and Seungmu, the 27th Important Intangible Cultural Property. She teaches at Mokwon University.
Join us for the launch of the Korean translation of The Power of Money: How Governments and Banks Create Money and Help Us All Prosper by economist and bestselling author Paul Sheard. Money issues dominate the news, but economic jargon and the complexity of it all can be bamboozling. Leading economist Paul Sheard is known for his ability to see the forest and the trees and demystify complex economic phenomena. With The Power of Money, Sheard empowers readers to become better-informed economic citizens by providing context for some of the biggest questions surrounding money, including how money comes into existence and whether cryptocurrencies are going to upend the money system as we know it. Sheard will tackle these topics and more in conversation with Chief Executive of MCC Productions and CNBC Contributor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera has 30 years of experience at the nexus of finance, economic development, and communication. She is the chief executive of MCC Productions and a CNBC Contributor. Caruso-Cabrera was the first Latina anchor at CNBC and first Chief International Correspondent. She spent 20+ years covering economic crises and international markets and interviewing presidents, prime ministers, and CEOS. She began her career at Univisión Spanish-language news in 1991. In 1993, she received an Emmy for a series she co-produced on the AIDS Crisis. She sits on the International Advisory Board of the Instituto Empressa in Madrid and serves as board president of Ballet Hispánico in NYC. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of NY, and the Latino Corporate Directors Association. In 2023, she joined the boards of Wendy’s and Del Real Foods, a portfolio company of Palladium Equity. Michelle has a BA in economics from Wellesley College.
Paul Sheard is a noted Australian-American economist and policy-watcher. As a financial markets economist, Sheard cut his teeth in Tokyo covering Japan’s “lost decades” and then, as chief economist of Lehman Brothers in New York, he had a front-row seat at the global financial crisis. Most recently Research Fellow and M-RCBG Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and before that Vice Chairman of S&P Global, Sheard held global chief economist positions at Standard & Poor’s and Nomura Securities, faculty positions at Osaka University and the Australian National University, and visiting scholar positions at Stanford University and the Bank of Japan. He has been a member of several World Economic Forum expert councils; a member of the board of the Foreign Policy Association, he is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, and the National Committee on United States-China Relations. Sheard has a BA (Hons) from Monash University and a PhD in Japanese Economy and Master of Economics from the ANU.
Today, South Korea is a cultural superpower—a global trendsetter producing award-winning films like Parasite, riveting dramas like Squid Game, and chart-topping music by K-pop groups such as BTS and BLACKPINK. But behind the country’s meteoric rise to the world stage, a phenomenon known as the Korean Wave, or hallyu, is the story of remarkable resilience and innovation.
Just a century ago, Korea was in search of a new national identity, following its occupation by Japan and the Korean War. Harnessing cutting-edge technology, the country has rapidly transformed its economy and international reputation. At the same time, its creative outputs are deeply rooted in its past, with many contemporary artists, filmmakers, musicians, and fashion designers paying tribute to traditional values and art forms dating back to Korea’s dynastic kingdom days.
Hallyu! The Korean Wave features approximately 250 objects—costumes, props, photographs, videos, pop culture ephemera, and contemporary works—providing an immersive and multisensory journey through a fascinating history, and a celebration of a vibrant creative force that bridges cultural, societal, and linguistic divides and continues to reach new heights today.
First presented at Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the exhibition is currently at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and will travel to Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
Three curators—Rosalie Kim, Victoria and Albert Museum; Christina Yu Yu, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Yoon-Jee Choi, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco—discuss this captivating exhibition and South Korea’s rise as a cultural superpower.
Hallyu! The Korean Wave
The Curatorial Roundtable
Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Rosalie Kim joined the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2012 as the curator of the Korean collection in the Asia Department and led exhibitions including Hallyu! The Korean Wave and Lustrous Surfaces: Lacquer from Asia and Beyond. Her interest lies in Korean craft and design, world lacquer history, and the making of contemporary culture, craft and design in the digital age. Prior to the V&A, she studied philosophy and civil engineering in architecture in Belgium and Italy, before obtaining her MArch and PhD by Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her PhD thesis was nominated for the RIBA President’s Award for Research in 2012. She worked as an architect in Korea and Europe and led architectural design studios at Kingston University, London.
Christina Yu Yu is the Matsutaro Shoriki Chair, Art of Asia and leads a team of curators in overseeing the Museum of Fine Arts’ collection of more than 100,000 works from Japan, China, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world. She first joined the Museum in 2018, after serving as the director of the USC Pacific Asia Museum. Christina was born and raised in China, attended Wellesley for her undergraduate studies, completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and began her curatorial career with an internship at the MFA. She has also previously held positions at LACMA, Chambers Fine Art (a gallery based in New York and Beijing) and the Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan.
Yoon-Jee Choi recently joined the Asian Art Museum–Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art & Culture as the Assistant Curator for Korean Art. Before she joined the University of Chicago Ph.D. program in 2018, she studied Korean art history in general at Ewha Womans University and interned for the National Museum of Korea. While she serves as a specialist in Korean art at the current institution, her larger body of research focuses on the art historical exchange among Northeast Asian countries during the early modern era, especially on the 19th-to-early-20th-century cultural interactions and exchanges between Korea and Japan. She is set to complete a Ph.D. examining the industrialization and modernization of the craft industry in Northeast Asia.
Join us for a conversation with Pastor Seungeun Kim from the film Beyond Utopia. Pastor Kim will discuss his history and experiences working with his wife, North Korean escapee Esther Park, to build a modern “underground railroad” that helps fleeing North Korean refugees find safety and freedom at the end of a perilous journey. The conversation is moderated by policy director Jonathan Corrado. Interpretation is provided by Deukyun “Sunny” Hwang.
Pastor Seungeun Kim is a prominent human rights activist, founder, president, and primary spokesperson for Caleb Mission. Caleb Mission began in 2000 when Pastor Kim went on a mission trip to the North Korean border area in China. At that time, a North Korean defector named Esther Park hid in the church where Pastor Kim served, and the two fell in love and promised a future together. There were not many North Korean defectors back then, so there was no known rescue route. In order to safely rescue her and their loved ones, Pastor Kim surveyed the Mongolian desert and the jungles of Southeast Asia, and investigated ways to rescue them by boat. Esther Park and Pastor Kim married after arriving in South Korea and together they founded the Caleb Mission, where they continue to work today. Pastor Kim passionately serves North Korean defectors and works tirelessly for their rescue and for building their self-reliance. He has also worked to rescue North Korean orphans. He has tried establishing international and domestic laws so the children can be more easily adopted and raised by loving families. Pastor Kim gained international recognition for his modern-day “Underground Railroad” ministry, which has rescued over 1,000 North Korean defectors since 2000. His activities have been documented in various media outlets and were featured prominently in the recently released documentary Beyond Utopia. The film won the Audience Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Pastor Kim’s faith and commitment to social justice for the people of North Korea continue to inspire people worldwide.
Deukyun “Sunny” Hwang is a filmmaker who also serves as the operating officer at Caleb Mission. Originally from South Korea, she began her film career in 2013 in New York City. Sunny has worked on various international projects, primarily Korean-US collaborations. In 2021, she joined Caleb Mission to help advocate for North Korean human rights issues globally after learning about Pastor Seungeun Kim and his work. Sunny is an associate producer of Beyond Utopia, a prominent documentary that highlights Pastor Kim’s North Korean defectors’ rescue mission and the challenges they face. The film won the Audience Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the 96th Academy Awards. During the international release process of Beyond Utopia, she interpreted Pastor Kim’s interviews for various media outlets, including BBC, NPR, the Times, and the Guardian.
With the ever-growing need to understand ourselves and humanity as a whole, it is necessary to examine the concepts of morality, ethics and universal values as guiding principles of the human condition. With generous support from Y.T. Hwang Family Foundation, The Korea Society presents a Series on Ethics and Common Values.
This series promotes the understanding of central themes of our human existence – morality, ethics, personal responsibility, compassion and civility – through a series of lectures by distinguished speakers and conversation with extraordinary individuals who exemplify the universal values in line with the mission of Y. T. Hwang Family Foundation and The Korea Society.
The Korea Society and Y. T. Hwang Family Foundation is proud to present Min Jin Lee in a conversation with Kyung B. Yoon.
This program is made possible by the support from Y. T. Hwang Family Foundation
Y. T. Hwang Family Foundation Series on Ethics & Common Values A Conversation with Min Jin Lee
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 | 6 PM (EDT)
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Min Jin Lee is the author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award. Lee is the recipient of the 2022 Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity. She has received fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee has been inducted into the Hall of Fame for the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Writers, and the Bronx High School of Science. She has been honored by the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Korean American Community Foundation, the Council of Korean Americans, the Queens Public Library, and the Korean Community Center. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Chosun Ilbo, Vogue, and Food & Wine. She has introduced the Penguin Classics edition of The Great Gatsby. In 2023, Lee served as the Editor of the The Best American Shorts Stories. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. Lee lives in Harlem with her family.
About the Moderator:
Kyung B. Yoon is the President and CEO (as well as co-founder) of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF), the first and largest philanthropic organization in the U.S. dedicated to strengthening Korean American communities. Her career in poverty alleviation, development economics, and media encompasses her roles as the Executive Producer of Television at the World Bank Institute and a correspondent for WNYW-Fox Channel 5 where she made history as the first Korean American broadcast reporter in NYC. Kyung is currently a contributing reporter to CUNY-TV’s Asian American Life, which is broadcast nationally on PBS stations and for which she received an Emmy nomination. She has previously served as the board chair of Philanthropy New York and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, as a trustee of the New York Foundation, and as a board member of the United Way of New York City.
How can a Korean artist—however one identifies as such—shape their own narrative in this fast changing, global environment? Educated, living, and working in both the United States and South Korea, three Korean artists ponder what home means to them by exploring the landscape surrounding them. Working in three distinctive media—sculpture, photography, and contemporary mother-of-pearl art—this group of young artists represent the international experience and diversity within the new generation of Korean artists and the fluid definition of one’s identity and home in the age of intercontinental living.
The Korea Society Gallery is open only by appointment. The appointment must be made at least 24 hours prior to the scheduled visit. To make an appointment, please contact info@koreasociety.org.
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday 10 AM-4:30 PM By Appointment Only
Heejung Cho is a sculptor and printmaker born in Korea and currently lives in NYC. She has completed residencies at Museum of Arts and Design, Newark Museum, Bronx Museum of Arts, Lower East Side Printshop, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and Robert Blackburn Workshop. Her work is featured in numerous venues internationally in the U.S., Korea, China and Sweden. She received her BFA at Seoul National University and a MFA at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.
Cho abstracts the urban landscape by breaking down the structure and perspective with reclaimed wood scraps. Deconstructing and reconstructing her personal landmarks into structures of perspective, the works represent spaces beyond the specific place and time, presenting an abstraction of space, texture, color and pattern of urban landscape.
Simpson Kim is a South Korean photographer, specializing in street style and fashion photography. In 2011, he left university and headed to New York to become a street photographer. He walked New York’s streets every day, capturing the eclectic styles of the city. Since 2015, Simpson has worked with WWD for street style during Seoul Fashion Week.
His photographs have been featured in Vogue US, British GQ, and Hollywood Reporter, among other publications. He has also worked with various fashion brands around the world, including Louis Vuitton, Bureau Betak, Eider, and many others. Currently, he serves as an ambassador and muse at Nikon Imaging Korea.
Jian Yoo is a contemporary mother-of-pearl artist residing and working between Korea and the United States. While studying Interior Design at Pratt Institute of New York, Yoo chose mother-of-pearl—or “jagae” in Korean—as her medium, inspired by her father, a master of “najeonchilgi” or Korean nacre lacquerware who ran his own studio throughout her childhood. Returning to Korea in 2013, Yoo embarked on pioneering the modern mother-of-pearl art while establishing her own studio, ARIJIAN.
Yoo designed the trophy for the first Seoul Smart City Prize, and her artwork was chosen as the Presidential State Gift for the South Korea-US Summit of 2023 and 44 other heads of state and foreign dignitaries. She held a solo exhibition at the Andaz Hotel Gangnam in Seoul, Lotte Hotel Seoul, Culture Object in New York, and was featured in exhibitions at, among others, Downtown Design Dubai, UNESCO Headquarter in Paris, and National Folk Museum of Korea, which also acquired her artwork. Jian Yoo has also collaborated with brands such as Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Cartier, Blancpain, Girogetti, and many others.
Zero Waste is a timely documentary film that explores the current recycling efforts in South Korea through the personal stories of six changemakers. These individuals are advocates for a circular economy who fight against the ongoing plastic waste pollution crisis in the country which has been aggravated by the recent global pandemic.
To better understand how so many recyclables end up in our ocean and landfill, director Danny Kim picked up his camera to document if our efforts are wasted after decades of neglect, or if we can make a real impact with our recycling endeavors. A winner of the Green Award at the 2023 Terraviva Film Festival in Italy and the Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 39th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Zero Waste paints a portrait of both the magnitude of the problem, and the perseverance of those people willing to address them.
On Earth Day 2024, watch the documentary film and join us for a Director’s Talk.
Zero Waste
Virtual Screening: April 21-22 A Director’s Talk: April 22
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Danny Kim is an award winning documentary filmmaker based in Seoul, South Korea. His first feature documentary film Love Child as a producer have screened at such festivals as Sundance, Jeonju International Film Festival, and Wisconsin Film Festival. His recent credits include director/writer/editor/DP for feature documentary Zero Waste which won the emerging filmmaker award at the 39th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Kim is also a founder of Docu+, an impact film studio based in Seoul, South Korea. Kim is a graduate from University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds Masters of Fine Arts degree at Duke University’s Experimental and Documentary Arts program in Durham, NC.
About the Moderator:
Carina Lee works in the media business field and is responsible for acquiring movies and TV series in Korea. She has built a diverse career ranging from Journalism to content strategy field at global companies such as the Associated Press and Warner Bros Discovery. Carina has also served on the Asian American Journalists Association Seoul board since 2014 and was the Seoul Vice President from 2020 to 2022.
National Museum of Korea; Cultural Heritage Administration |
In this lecture, Professor Sunglim Kim explores various metalwares and decorative arts throughout the history of the Korean peninsula, and craftsmanship and techniques used to create them.
Sunglim Kim is an associate professor of Korean art and culture at Dartmouth College. She specializes in the material and consumer culture of the late Joseon period and women artists in modern and contemporary Korea.
Darye–”etiquette for tea” or “tea rite”– has been an integral part of Korean history and culture for over a thousand years. Donghyun Kim, a Korean heritage curator, discusses the history of tea practices and aesthetics in Korea and the landscape of contemporary Korean tea culture.
The Philosophy of Korean Tea
Wednesday, April 3, 2024 | 6:30 PM (EDT)
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Donghyun Kim is a Korean heritage curator and the direct, eighteenth generation descendant of Siseup Kim (1435-1493), an early Joseon period tea connoisseur, literatus, and author of the first Korean classical novel, Geumoshinhwa. He established ROHAE, a curatorial research studio, through which he reinterprets and modernizes Siseup Kim’s tea practices and aesthetics.
In addition to his research positions previously held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Kim has also collaborated with Seoul’s Arumjigi Culture Keepers Foundation and Michelin-starred Onjium Cultural Center in tea culture research projects. He holds a B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Visual Arts and an M.A. in Art History and Education from Columbia University.
Join us for a discussion with the Senior Washington Correspondent for Bloomberg News Saleha Mohsin on her newly released book Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order, in cooperation with the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP). As the global order continues to evolve, it seems that the dollar’s dominance may find itself waning for the first time in 70 years. In a world dividing into two camps, one led by China and the other by the U.S, Mohsin investigates America’s strong dollar policy and how it has shaped the world order, the effects of America’s heavy-handed sanctions on its adversaries, and how American allies like South Korea view the dollar in today’s global financial system. The conversation will be moderated by former CBS White House Correspondent and NCAFP Board Member, Jacqueline Adams.
Saleha Mohsin is the senior Washington correspondent for Bloomberg News. In her role, she covered the final months of the Obama Treasury Department, then the transition into the Trump presidency. Her work as a Treasury reporter encompassed Trump’s trade war, economic sanctions, parts of the Federal Reserve and Capitol Hill, and the government’s response to the worst public health crisis in nearly a century. Saleha also covered the transition into the Biden White House, including the stronger focus on economic statecraft and the ‘Buy America’ agenda that carried over from the previous administration. She also reported on the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Jacqueline Adams has had a long career as a journalist, author and convener. She launched a second career as a communications strategist after more than two decades as an Emmy Award-winning CBS News correspondent. Through her boutique consulting firm, J Adams: Strategic Communications, LLC, she counsels corporate and non-profit clients. An alumna of Harvard Business School, Ms. Adams serves on the Board of Directors of the HBS Club of New York, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and the senior community, Brookhaven at Lexington. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Advisory Committee of the United States Institute of Peace, and the Advisory Council of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream.
