Dr. Youngeun Koo is the 2023–24 SBS Korean Studies Postdoctoral Fellow in the Social Sciences. Her research focuses on the entanglements of care, humanitarianism, and development as crucial sites of social governance in the Global South. Her current book project, tentatively titled Expert, Empire, and Dictator: The Transnational Politics of Care and the Making of International Adoption in Cold War South Korea, 1961–1979, tells the story of the world’s longest-running and largest international adoption program from the little-known perspective of the first generation of...
Dr. Jeehyun Choi is a scholar of Asian American literature whose research interests lie at the intersection of Korean diasporic literatures, the global history of leftist cultural and social movements, and translation studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript about the radical anti-imperialist politics of early Korean diasporic writers in the U.S. During her time at the Korea Institute, Jeehyun will continue her work in excavating the vibrant Korean diasporic literary scene of the 1930s. She approaches translation as an opportunity to excavate transpacific dialogues obscured...