March 25, 2025 | 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m | Doheny Memorial Library, Friends Lecture Hall (room 240) | RSVP

*Virtual access available for those outside of LA

This conference seeks to broaden and integrate existing historical accounts of colonial Korea (1910–1945) with an understanding of Korean diasporic experiences in countries such as the United States, China, and Japan. Bringing together leading scholars of both colonial Korea and early Korean America, the gathering will provoke reflection on personal experiences in the era of global imperialism on both sides of the Pacific. Inspired in part by the publication of Kim San and Nym Wales’ Song of Arirang, conference speakers will address a diverse range of topics, including the transpacific critical reimagining of Korean history, the contributions of diasporic activism to the domestic independence movement, and the effects of colonization on the development of a Korean American identity. This event marks the inaugural MARCH FIRST SYMPOSIUM ON HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY. The popular uprisings on the Korean peninsula of March 1, 1919, represent a foundational moment in the history of both South Korea and North Korea. The University of Southern California and its Korean Studies Institute have special ties to this event. The KSI is housed in the family residence of March First leader AHN CHANG HO, while USC’S KOREAN HERITAGE LIBRARY preserves the historical archives of the Korean National Association (1909–1988). The conference will include an exhibition of selected documents from these archives. The conference is organized by SUNYOUNG PARK (EALC, USC) and JUNGEUN HONG (USC Libraries). Event sponsors include the USC KOREAN STUDIES INSTITUTE, the USC KOREAN HERITAGE LIBRARY, the SHINSO ITO CENTER FOR JAPANESE RELIGIONS AND CULTURE, the USC EAST ASIAN STUDIES CENTER, and the CONSULATE GENERAL OF THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA.

Conference Schedule

11:00–11:10 a.m. Welcome remarks by William Deverell, Dean, Division of Social Sciences and Youngwan Kim, General Consulate of the Republic of Korea 

11:10–11:15 a.m. Opening remarks by Sunyoung Park, Director of the Korean Studies Institute

SESSION I Presenting Song of Arirang: The Story of a Korean Revolutionary in China

11:15–11:30 a.m. Sunyoung Lee (Chief Editor, Kaya Press), “Bringing Back Song of Arirang: A Publisher’s Perspective”

11:30 a.m.–12:00 noon Dongyoun Hwang (Volume Editor, Soka University), “Re-reading Song of Arirang from a Regional Perspective”

12:00 noon–12:30 p.m. Q&A moderated by Jiwoong Choi (USC)

12:30–1:30 p.m. Lunch Break and Exhibition Tour: The Archives of the Korean National Association at USC

SESSION II Negotiating Late Colonial Modernity: Korean Culture During World War II

1:30–2:00 p.m. Kyu Hyun Kim (UC Davis), “Problematizing ‘Collaborationist Literature’: Intersubjective Identity Construction in Yi Kwangsu and Ch’oe Chae-sŏ’s Late Colonial Writings”

2:00–2:30 p.m. Mi-Ryong Shim (University of Georgia), “The Cultural Politics of Mobility: Fascism, Racial Capitalism, and Transborder Migration in Late Colonial Korea”

2:30–3:00 p.m. Jiwoong Choi (USC), “Im Hwa Beyond Joseon Cinema: Reading a Transnational Film Theory in Colonial Korea”

3:00–3:30 p.m. Q&A moderated by Sunyoung Park (USC)

3:30–4:00 p.m. Coffee Break

SESSION III Remembering the Early Korean American Diaspora

4:00–4:30 p.m. Kenneth Klein (USC Libraries), “Curating the Archives of the Korean National Association (1909–1988)”

4:30–5:00 p.m. John S. W. Park (UC Santa Barbara), “Koreans as ‘Aboriginals’: American Scholarly and Diplomatic Accounts of Korea, 1871–1905”

5:00–5:30 p.m. Youngoh Jung (University of Hawaii), “A Different Diaspora: Cross-Racial Encounters and the Possibilities of Solidarities in the Korean American Diaspora, 1907–1933”

5:30–6:00 p.m. Q&A moderated by Gloria Koo (USC)

Panelist Bios

Jiwoong Choi is a PhD student in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. His research interests include East Asian cinemas and literatures in a transnational context, particularly the discursive constructions of cinema in colonial Korea. He holds a BA from the University of Tokyo and a MA from Yale University.

Dongyoun Hwang is specialized in modern Chinese intellectual history and is Professor of Asian Studies at Soka University of America. He is the author of Anarchism in Korea: Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of Development. His research has focused on the rise and spread of transnational anarchism in twentieth century East Asia and the Chinese collaboration with Japan during the Pacific War with the emphasis on Wang Jingwei and his collaborationist government. He is currently working on a project on anarchist education in China and Korea, and his new article entitled “In Search for a Place-based Equivalent: Translating Anarchism in Colonial and Post-Colonial Korea” is forthcoming.

Youngoh Jung is the current Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Center for Korean Studies and the incoming Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.  His research specializes on the history of race and racialization in the Korean American diaspora. His current work focuses on the understudied histories of cross-racial encounters and solidarities in the Korean American diaspora and collective resistance against overlapping imperialisms throughout the 20th century.

Kyu Hyun Kim is Associate Professor of Japanese and Korean History at University of California, Davis.  He holds a BA from Harvard-Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. He is the author of The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan (Harvard Asia Center Publication, 2007). His forthcoming book is entitled Treasonous Patriots: Japanese Colonialism, Wartime Mobilization and the Problem of Korean Identity, 1937-1945. He has written numerous articles on modern Japanese and Korean history, Japanese popular culture and Korean cinema, among other topics, and has served as a Contributing Editor to www.koreanfilm.org, the oldest English-language website devoted to Korean cinema.

Kenneth Klein served as Head of the East Asian Library at the University of Southern California between the years 1983 and 2020. In that role, he oversaw the founding of the University’s Korean Heritage Library and worked closely with its Curator, Joy Kim, to build it into one of the country’s leading academic Korean collections. He was particularly involved in the development of Korean and Korean American related digital collections, the Korean American Digital Archive (KADA) and the Peace Corps Korea Archive. He retired from USC in 2020, but continues to further the development of both as a member of the Korean American Pioneer Council and as a board member of the Friends of Korea.

Gloria Koo is Associate Director at the Korean Studies Institute (KSI) at USC. In addition to managing the programming and operation of the Institute, she researches on the topics of international political economy and U.S.-Asia relations. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from University of Southern California.

Sunyoung Lee is the Publisher and Editor of Kaya Press, a press dedicated to the literatures of the Asian and Pacific Island diasporas, where she has worked since 1994. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sunyoung Park is Associate Professor in the departments of East Asian Languages and Cultures and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California, where she also serves as the Director of the Korean Studies Institute. She is the author of The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (2015) and has edited and/or translated several volumes including Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea (essays; 2019) and Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of Science Fiction from South Korea (fiction; 2019). She is currently writing a monograph on science fiction and the politics of modernization in South Korea.

John S.W. Park is Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara.  His research areas include American immigration law and American immigration history, comparative ethnic studies, and legal and political theory in American public law.  He has published four scholarly monographs over the past two decades.  For the past few years, he’s been working on a book in Korean and Korean American History, one that examines the migrations of Americans to Korea, and then the subsequent migrations of Koreans to the United States.  His presentation for this Symposium is part of that longer work.  

Mi-Ryong Shim is assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies at the University of Georgia. Her forthcoming book examines the cultural politics of transborder mobility -- in modes of soldiering, translation, commerce, and migration -- within late colonial Korea and the wartime Japanese empire.