24.01.2024 - 18:00

EAF Guest Lecture by Derek Kramer

Flagging the Future: Science, Symbolism, and Sovereignty in Post-Liberation Korea, 1945–1950  |  Wed, January 24, 2024, 6–8 pm (CET)

Participation in the zoom meeting: Registration link:
https://ruhr-uni-bochum.zoom.us/j/63248533889?pwd=ZjYvdzdjdXhXSGJMWFdLSDVETFZCdz09

Meeting-ID: 632 4853 3889, Passwort: future

Organizer
DFG Research Training Group 2833 East Asian Futures: Visions and Realizations on National, Transregional and Global Scales, Ruhr University Bochum and University of Duisburg-Essen

About the Speaker
Derek Kramer, PhD, is a lecturer in Korean Studies at the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield. He held research posts at Korea University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He obtained his degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto in 2021. His work focuses on the history of science in modern Korea. At present, he is working on a book manuscript that explores the cultural and intellectual responses to the atomic age in early Cold War North and South Korea. You can find out more about Dr Kramer via his personal website: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/seas/people/academic-staff/derek-kramer.

Abstract
This study examines the introduction of North Korea’s Republican Flag to underscore the role of science in the marshalling of postcolonial political authority. Rather than understand science as simply a mode of knowledge production, the topic is approached as a universalizing discourse generative of political authenticity. The article maintains that this latter expression of the field facilitated and justified the circulation of North Korea’s new national banner. Officially adopted by Pyongyang in 1948, the creation and composition of this symbol of sovereignty has generally been understood as an expression of Soviet influence and North Korean state power. However, by highlighting the circulation of the flag outside of the Northern and by focusing on the assertions that accompanied its introduction, this article attends to how Korea’s Republican Banner enjoyed a social currency rooted in the scientific and progressive traits assigned to the marker.

For further information, please refer to:
https://east-asian-futures.de
Contact: info@east-asian-futures.de