Join us for our second conversation with Seoul National University sociology Professor Chang Kyung-Sup who will discuss various challenges posed by South Korea’s “compressed modernity.” He writes that the same strategies and conditions that enabled explosive development and modernization in South Korea and other Asian societies also produced “existentially hazardous consequences in virtually all areas of public and private life, and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to sustained advances in the future.” And he argues that South Korea's dynamism flows from the methods that it utilizes to overcome such challenges. This program is a collaboration with the Society’s Policy Department and the Education Department.
Professor Chang is joined in conversation with education senior advisor Linda Tobash, policy director Jonathan Corrado, and policy program officer Chelsie Alexandre.
Paperback copies of Professor Chang’s newest book, The Risk of Compressed Modernity, are available for purchase online at a 20% discount using the code 20KSC. You can view our first discussion with Professor Chang in 2023 here.
This program is made possible by the generous support of our individual and corporate members and the Korea Foundation. Promotional support for this program is provided by The Institute of Social Sciences at Seoul National University (SNU ISS).
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Korea's Compressed Modernity and Its Risks
Wednesday, October 8, 2025 | 8 AM (EDT)
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
About the Speaker:
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Chang Kyung-Sup is a SNU Distinguished Professor at Seoul National University, where he has taught sociology since 1991. His work has dealt with comparative development and modernity, Korean liberalism, Asian citizenship regimes, and Asian transnationalism. His authored books include: The Risk of Compressed Modernity (Polity, 2025); The Logic of Compressed Modernity (Polity, 2022); Transformative Citizenship in South Korea: Politics of Transformative Contributory Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Developmental Liberalism in South Korea: Formation, Degeneration, and Transnationalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); South Korea under Compressed Modernity: Familial Political Economy in Transition (Routledge, 2010); Asia In Itself: The Rise of a Continental Society (Polity, in progress). He is also a co editor of The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 5 Volumes (Wiley, 2017). |