From Pepperdine, USC, Claremont McKenna College & UCLA
Although young crooner John Park (a Northwestern Wildcat) failed to make the giant pop culture breakthrough via American Idol celebrity, matters connected with Korean culture get ample consideration on campuses across the Southland:
In Malibu, today and Saturday, the 24th annual Korean American Student Conference will run in full force with seminars, speeches, presentations and entertainment, including the highlight Asian American talent showcase, Kollaboration 10, which will be in downtown Los Angeles. The conference, which began at Princeton, will bring together students of Korean descent along with such community figures as KW Lee, a pioneering and always acerbic journalist, and John Suh, CEO of the path-breaking online legal service LegalZoom. The entertainers scheduled for the conference include comedian Danny Cho and the Asian American band 'Seriously.'
Photo: pioneering journalist KW Lee
24th annual Korean American student conference in Malibu
Click here for full conference information
In Exposition Park, Trojan experts say they will launch an initiative to scrutinize a critical, long-term concern affecting the two Koreas: What might be the future economic, political and human security issues of a potential reunification of the North and South? While many policy experts have examined the prospective and immediate crisis and military concerns that are forecast by a sudden merging of the nations on the divided Korean peninsula, scholars from the Korean Studies Institute and the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies program will work with colleagues in Southern California, the U.S. and overseas to collaborate on information and ideas with a longer-horizon view of Korean unification and its potential effects.
Photo: Korean Studies Institute director David Kang
Scholarly scrutiny with long view on possible effects of Korean unification
In Claremont, a scholar from Boston on Monday night will explore how North Korea dealt with women's liberation during the brief time from 1945-1950, the 'liberated space' of the immediate post-colonial period. Though women in the Communist north got institutional impetus to join in new political and economic roles in the post-war mass mobilizations, their lives also remained constrained, and, instead, there emerged the Hermit Kingdom's iconic 'revolutionary mother' figure, she says. Her 6:45 p.m. talk is free and open to the public.
Examining women's liberation in post-colonial North Korea
In Westwood, five diverse area specialists -- with the sponsorship of the Bruins, Trojans, the Korean Culture Center of Los Angeles and the Southern California Association of Korean Studies -- gathered recently to discuss a range of contemporary issues confronting the North, South and the East Asian region. They tackled politics and corruption in Seoul, attitudinal differences and similarities between those in the South and North, particularly as seen in pop culture and the increasing economic power in the South.
Symposium focuses on contemporary issues of the Koreas
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