Drawing by Karl Stevens for the New York Review of Books What if the finest, funniest, craziest, sanest, most cheerfully depressing Korean-American novel was also one of the first? - Ed Park Join Alexander Chee and Ed Park in their conversation on Younghill Kang, the first Korean-American novelist and a pioneer of Asian American literature. As they discuss the life and career of Kang and his novel East Goes West,… Read More

Join us for a discussion on challenges and opportunities for continued nuclear negotiations with North Korea, featuring Markus Garlauskas, former U.S. National Intelligence Officer for North Korea, Soo Kim, RAND, and Ankit Panda, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. What are the chances that North Korea denuclearizes and what can the U.S. and South Korea do to increase those chances? Should an interim deal with snapback measures be considered good progress,… Read More

USC Professor and Korean Studies Institute Director David Kang joined Senior Director Stephen Noerper to discuss progress and challenges in Korea-US relations. They weighed the fallout from the host nation support talks, shifts in joint military exercises, and priorities in US-ROK relations, with an eye toward invigorating the alliance seventy years since the start of the Korean War. Due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), this program will now be conducted… Read More

Image Credit: Instagram @drawings_for_my_grandchildren In this interview series, we take a dive into contemporary culture in South Korea. Grandpa Chan and Grandma Marina are influencers on Instagram, perhaps unlike anyone else you see on that platform, maybe just because of their age. Their Instagram account Drawings for My Grandchildren started in 2015, for which Grandpa Chan draws and Grandma Marina writes stories of their lives for their grandchildren. After 1100… Read More

Join the Society for a live webcast of the 2020 Sherman Family Emerging Scholar Lecture. The 2020 awardee is Sun-Min Park, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, who discusses Architecture as Kisul (Science-Technology) in Postwar Korea: Building the Industrial Nation-State. Ms. Park addresses architecture’s relationship to state-led, large-scale industrial development in post-war Korea. Melany Park is completing her Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture and holds Masters degrees… Read More

America's leading authority on BTS, K-Pop, and East Asian entertainment, Tamar Herman returns to the Korea Society with her book BTS: Blood, Sweat & Tears. BTS has conquered Western music charts and social media on their way to being the biggest band in the world. With record-breaking firsts and three Billboard No. 1 albums within a year, their music and messaging has gone on to transcend the limitations of language,… Read More