Korean Culture after the Kim Dae-Jung Administration

Korean-lecture

The second Kim Dae-Jung Memorial Lecture in Korean Studies will be held in the Umney Theatre in Robinson College on Friday 27 Jan at 5pm.

This year’s speaker is Kang Nae-Hui (pictured) of ChungAng University.  He is one of a handful of renowned public intellectuals in South Korea, known both as a pioneer of Cultural Studies and as an activist who has forcefully focused attention on the negative effects of globalization in his country.

He will speak on the topic of "Korean Culture after the Kim Dae-Jung Administration."  He will discuss the rising importance of culture industries and cultural movements after the victory of the democracy movement in 1987, examining its relations with the turbulent political and economic changes that occurred during those years.

Often referred to as the "Nelson Mandela of Asia," Kim Dae-Jung (1925-2009) was a democracy activist, dissident politician, and President of South Korea (1998-2003).

Over the course of his decades-long struggle against the military dictatorship in South Korea, he survived an assassination attempt and was once sentenced to death.

His leadership was crucial to the victory of the democracy movement in 1987, and he later became the first opposition politician to be elected president of South Korea in 1997.  As president, Kim led the country through the Asian financial crisis and tried to break through decades of Cold War animosity by pursuing a policy of engagement with North Korea termed the Sunshine Policy.

He went to Pyongyang for a historic summit between the two Koreas in 2000, and for his efforts to reunify and bring lasting peace to the peninsula, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

After his defeat in the presidential election of 1992, he spent several months as a visiting scholar at Clare Hall.  He received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2001.