Jungmin Seo
(Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2004)
Comparative politics; Nationalism; Chinese/Korean politics; Social theory.
Background: I was born in Busan, the biggest seaport in Korea, but raised and educated in downtown Seoul since my family moved to Seoul in 1974. While experiencing the radical changes of the city during the developmental periods, I naturally became interested in politics and economy in my early age. I went to Yonsei university, majoring in political science. During the college years, I witnessed tremendous pains and hopes in the process of democratization in the late 1980s. Since I was not able to clearly understand the vague images of the society and the fragmented memories about the events that happened around me, I decided to further my social inquiry and came to the United States in 1995 to pursue my graduate studies. I spent 8 years in Chicago as a graduate student and 1 year at University of Oregon as a visiting faculty member, before I joined the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Research Interests: My major research and teaching interests are East Asian politics, nationalism and the political economy of culture. I wrote my dissertation on the relationship between the Chinese cultural industry and popular nationalism at the University of Chicago. I am currently working on three projects: (1) the concept of democracy during the Tiananmen Democratic Movement in 1989; (2) the politics of symbolism in the Yushin period (1972-1979) in South Korea and (3) the South Korean state discourses on the influx of North Korean refugees and Korean Chinese workers.
Relevant Links:
Center for Chinese Studies
http://www.chinesestudies.hawaii.edu/index.php
Center for Korean Studies
http://www.hawaii.edu/korea/