Results for FEMGEN111

Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.