Diaspora and the Korean Wave

About the event 

This event is presented in partnership by the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, The Asia Center, Humanities Institute, School of International Letters and Cultures, and the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Los Angeles. 

Diaspora and the Korean Wave features a screening and lecture on the 2023 Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated film, Past Lives. 

The A24 film, which stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, was directed by Celine Song: Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.

Following the film, Professor Keung Yoon Bae, assistant professor of Korean Studies at Georgia Tech, will present a talk titled, “Past Lives, Present Tense: The Concurrent Conversations in Celine Song’s Past Lives.” 

Dr. Bae will discuss Past Lives as a work that is in active simultaneous conversation with three different cultures: Korea, diasporic culture, and American cinema. She will discuss Past Lives as an antidote to the exoticizing, Orientalist white gaze, as a meditation on diasporic culture, and finally as a reversal of the tendency of Western popular culture to emasculate Asian American men.

This event is a part of The College of Liberal Arts and Science's annual Humanities Week. 

About the speaker

Dr. Keung Yoon Bae is Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at the School of Modern Languages at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Her research intersects media studies, film, and history. Her most recent research examines the relationship between media production and the state in Korea, specifically looking at imperial regulation of colonial Korean cinema and the relationship between state and industry that was established at this time. She has a forthcoming article on colonial Korean filmmakers in the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.