Intimate Lives of Modern Korea

Some of the most fascinating and consequential characters of twentieth century Korea fell outside of history. Shunned by both north and south, their lives were unintelligible in state centered narratives and their archives scattered in former imperial metropoles in Russia, Japan and elsewhere. This talk is about a few of these characters and the journey to find what happened to them. 

Ruth Barraclough is an historian of modern Korea with a focus on labor, gender, and literature. She is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Columbia University. From 2025 she is the new Director of the Center for Korean Research at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.