Discussion on Gender and Domestic Violence in Korea--- Friday 1/30

THE CENTER FOR KOREAN STUDIES,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY
cordially invites you to the following COLLOQUIUM

Representing Nation and Gender on the Vernacular Korean Internet:
The Case of Lee Kyung-sil

Roger L. Janelli (Indiana University, Bloomington) and Dawnhee Yim
(Dongguk University)

Friday
January 30, 2004
4:15 p.m.

Institute of East Asian Studies
2223 Fulton Street
6th Floor Conference Room

Within the past few years, the Korean-language Internet has
emerged as one of the foremost technological devices for public
debate and political mobilization. Several online newspapers,
hundreds of thousands of bulletin boards, and a variety of other
Internet sites offer individuals opportunities to present views,
concerns, and opinions, usually anonymously. As a result,
diversity of thought is revealed more starkly than in newspapers,
television, or other more established media. This presentation
focuses on an incident of February of 2003 that captured major
public attention and motivated well over a thousand internet
postings. Lee Kyung-sil, a popular television personality, was
brutally attacked with a baseball bat by her husband, and this
instance of domestic violence soon became a focal point for debating
gender roles, sexual morality, and many other aspects of
contemporary life in South Korea. The posted commentaries offer an
opportunity to understand better the extensive disparity of thinking
about gender and national culture today. Roger Janelli and Dawnhee
Yim have co-authored Ancestor Worship and Korean Society (Stanford
University Press, 1972), Making Capitalism: The Social and Cultural
Construction of a South Korean Conglomerate (Stanford University
Press, 1983), and numerous journal articles on social relationships,
cultural practices, and folklore in Korea. Yim, Professor of History
at Dongguk University (Seoul), now serves on the International Jury
for the proclamation by UNESCO of Masterpieces of the Oral and
Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Janelli, Professor of Folklore and
Ethnomusicology and of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana
University (Bloomington) is a member of the Committee on Korean
Studies of the Association for Asian Studies. Their current
research focuses on the vernacular Internet in Korea.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

...for more information, visit our website at
http://ieas.berkeley.edu/cks/!

The Center for Korean Studies
University of California
2223 Fulton Street, Room 508
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 642-5674