Hyun Seon Park

Current Research

Park is working on a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Cold War Modernisms in Motion: War, Memory, and Body in South Korean Cinema, which investigates the geopolitical aesthetics of modernism in juxtaposition with the Cold War culture. It calibrates various modernist impulses that negotiate with the Cold War hegemony in the Korean peninsula from the mid-20th century to the contemporary reconfiguration of Post-Cold War world. Focusing on critical issues such as the affective mode of war memories, the aesthetic engagement of authorship and genres, corporeal allegories of gender and violence, the book aims to articulate how the cultural Cold War formulated the socio-political structure of affect, gender, and space in South Korean films. 

Selected Publications

“Fear of the Bodies: Envisioning the Gendered Masses in South Korean Documentary Films.” Korean studies, Vol. 49, No. 1, 2025.

“Through the Lens of South Korean Cine-feminism: House of Hummingbird (2018) and Moving On (2020)” in The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas, edited by Zhen Zhang, Sangjoon Lee, Debashree Mukherjee, and Intan Paramaditha. New York: Routledge, 2024.

“The Visual Chronopolitics of ‘Comfort Women’ Narrative Films in South Korea,” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Vol. 14, No. 2, Fall 2022.

“Cine-Gwangju: Postmemory of Democratic Movements in South Korean Films” (Guest Editor’s Introduction), Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 2022.

“Colonial Modernism and Inverted Subjectivity: The Paradoxes of the Mirror in the Writings of Yi Sang” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature, Vol. III edited by Christopher Lupke, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2020.

“Road to Sampo (1975): South Korean Mobile Vulgus and Cinematic Affectivity on the Road,” in Rediscovering Korean Cinema, edited by Sangjoon Lee, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2020.

“South Korean Cine-feminism on the Move” (Guest Editor’s Introduction), Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Vol. 12, No. 1, Fall 2020.

“The Sublime Objects of Affectivity: Shoes, Vampires, and Colors in Park Chan-wook’s Thirst,” Telos, Vol. 184. Fall 2018.

“Cold War Mnemonics: History, Melancholy, and Landscape in South Korean Films of the 1960s” Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 21 No. 2. Fall 2017.

“Volatile Biopolitics: Korean Cinema’s Bodily Encounter with the Cold War.” The Review of Korean Studies, Vol. 18-1. June 2015. 

“Allegorizing Noir: Violence, Body, and Space in the Postwar Korean Film Noir” in East Asian Film Noir: Transnational Encounters and Intercultural Dialogue. ed. Chi-Yun Shin and Mark Gallagher. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.

Expanded Publication List

Grants and Fellowships

Korea Research Foundation, Three-year group research project grant, 2018-2021

Yonsei University Future-leading Research Initiative’ Fellowship, 2015 & 2016 

Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies Grant, Short-term Research Travel Outside North America, Spring 2013

Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Southern California, 2012 - 2013

Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, UC Irvine, 2012

Courses Taught

Korean Cinema in a Global Context

Korean Proficiency Through Film

An Introduction to Making Videographic Essay

Film Feminism and the World

Women and the City

Education

Ph.D.     University of California at Irvine, 2012                             

• Emphasis: East Asian Cultural Studies
• Dissertation: Korean Modernism at the Margin: Visualizing Affect, Body, and Exteriority in Modern Literature and Film 

Recent Presentations

Invited Talk 

• “Cold War Modernism and Park Chan-wook's Rewrite of The Sympathizer,” East Asia Center’s Fall Speaker Series, University of Virginia, November 15, 2024.
• “Precarious Representation: Cold War Refugees and Border-crossers in South Korean Cinema,” Kim-Renaud East Asian Humanities Lecture Series (KREAH), George Washington University, November 1, 2024 
• “Digital Humanities Criticism and Video Essay” in Special Lecture, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, January 12, 2024.   
• "South Korean Cine-feminism" in Art-Talks, The 8th Korean Film Festival in Canada, "Narratives Beyond Borders: Women's Perspectives in the Korean Cinema (1959-2021, Series II), September 30 – October 30, 2021. 
• "Cinematic Representations on the Korean War and Its Policies" in the Summer Special Lecture, "The Korean War 70 Years On: War as Everyday Life, Everyday Life as War," The Institute of Korean Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, August 18, 2020.
• "The Cold War Intervention in Korea: War, Film, and Postmemory," EALL Talk Series, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, February 25, 2019.
• "Cold War Culture and Memory," Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, November 21. 2018.

Presentation at the International Conference

• “Cold War Modernism and Park Chan-wook's Rewrite of The Sympathizer,” Asian Cinemas Encounter the Cold War, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March 28-29, 2025
• “Memories of (In)visible Violence: Exploring Aporia of Justice in South Korean Cinema,” in the panel of Mediation and Aesthetics of Violence in Korean Visual Media, Modern Languages Association (MLA), New Orleans, Jan 9, 2025.
• "The Fear of the Bodies: Precarious Women in South Korean Documentary Films," Precariousness and Ethics of Care: Contemporary Korean Women’s Literature and Cinema, University of California, Irvine, May 30 – June 1, 2024
• "Weaving 'Worlds' in a House: House of Hummingbird and Moving On," South Korean Women's Cinema Conference 2021, October 23-25, 2021.
• "Envisioning Cold War Utopian 'Korea': Film Collections by Theodore Conant and by Humphrey Leynse" in the panel of Cinema, Democracy, and the Cultural Cold War in Korea, Association of Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE 2019), Rome, Friday, April 12, 2019.
• "Mass Politics and Myth of National Flag Rally," Organizer, Chair, and Panelist in the "Movement, Community, and Political Affect" panel, The 12th Biennial Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, Shanghai, August 2018.