Images of North Korea and South Korea pervade US mainstream media. North Korea is at once a laughing stock, a threat, a human rights tragedy. The South has become the land of K-pop, hi-tech, high fashion: cool Korea. What lies behind these opposing images? Are there any commonalities between North Korean and South Korean culture? Listen to Hughes discuss the Cold War history of national division on the Korean peninsula and the possibilities of reconciliation and reunification.

BIO

Associate Professor of Modern Korean Literature, Columbia University. Director, Center for Korean Research, Columbia University

Theodore Hughes is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Humanities and Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. He is the author of Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea: Freedom’s Frontier (Columbia University Press, 2012), which was awarded the Association for Asian Studies James B. Palais Book Prize. He is the co-editor of Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013) and the translator of Panmunjom and Other Stories by Lee Ho-Chul (Norwalk: EastBridge, 2005).