Precarious Representation: Cold War Refugees and Border-crossers in South Korean Cinema

Friday, November 1, 2024 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT
Off-Campus Location, George Washington University, Room 352

This talk examines the cinematic representation of the Cold War diaspora, focusing on refugees, immigrants, and border-crossers within the trans-territorial geopolitics of the Cold War. By discussing various films, from postwar South Korean thrillers to Zhang Lu's North Korean Defector trilogy, it highlights how Korean cinema critiques the notion of "surplus humans" and envisions the paradox of representation in relation to the bio-necro-politics of the (post-)Cold War system.

Speaker

Hyun Seon Park is Assistant Professor at George Mason University. She is also appointed to the executive committee of the LLC Korean forum at the Modern Language Association and serves as Joint researcher at Institute for Integrated Medical Humanities (IMH) at Kyung Hee University in Korea. Her research interests include Korean film history, Cold War culture, affect and memory, and gender politics. Park received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the USC's Korean Studies Institute, a Guest Programmer at the Seoul International Women's Film Festival, a co-editor-in-chief of Culture/Science, a Visiting Professor at Korea University among many.