Work-in-Progress talk: “Racing the Subempire: Race, Developmentalism, and Global Modernity and South Korean Culture” by Oregon Humanities Center

Lim's project is a cultural history of race in South Korea that examines ideas and practices of race in literary and cultural production and discourse shaped at the nexus of modern Korean history and globalization processes. She examines Korean racial formation through literature, K-pop, and TV dramas like Squid Game. She explores how Koreans’ ideas of race were informed by their experiences under Japanese colonialism and U.S. neo-colonialism, connecting Korean studies with concepts like racial formation, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.