2026 Korean Language and Studies Student Research Symposium

Program Organizer: Angela Lee-Smith, Senior Lector II, EALL
Moderators: Kate Bingham YC'27 (East Asian Studies, Korea Track) &   Zephyr Simus YC/27 (East Asian Studies, Korea Track) 

Donghyung Lee is an M.Div. student at Yale Divinity School with academic interests in  systematic theology. He explores how religion can both mitigate and perpetuate social  exploitation in modern society. Donghyung’s advisor is Dr. Kathryn Tanner.

Mindy Su is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Yale University, specializing in modern East Asian history. Her primary advisor is Professor Dani Botsman.

So Jung Won is a senior in Pierson College studying History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health (HSHM) and Economics, and pursuing the Education Studies and Human Rights certificates. Her senior thesis for HSHM is advised by Professor Gourav Krishna Nandi. 

Christina Lee is a senior in Davenport College majoring in history and comparative literature with interests in women’s labor history, Korean literature, and translation studies. She is also a Yale Journalism Initiative scholar.

Gina Kim is a senior studying East Asian Languages and Literatures (Korean concentration) at Yale College. Her annotated translation was completed under the advisorship of Professor Youngkyun Choi.

Kristen Kim is a senior in Branford College, double-majoring in Ethics, Politics & Economics (EP&E) and Linguistics at Yale. This research was submitted for her Linguistics degree, advised by Professor Jason Shaw who also served as her Principal Investigator at the Yale Phonetics Lab. 

Soojin Park is a senior studying comparative literature with advanced language certificates in Korean and Spanish. Her senior essay is advised by Professors Marta Figlerowicz and Youngkyun Choi. 

Maggie Grether is a senior in Ezra Stiles college studying history, with a certificate in journalism. Her senior project is advised by Professor Michael Brenes. 

Moon Villages (Dal-Dongnae), High-Rise Apartments, and Urban Renewal: A Theological Critique of Seoul’s Capitalism and the Built Environment
Donghyung Lee (M.Div., Yale Divinity School)
This paper examines the relationship between finance capitalism and the built  environment in Seoul, South Korea, by analyzing two distinct urban spaces: the city’s slums, moon villages (dal-dongnae), and high-rise apartments. During rapid industrialization, war refugees, rural migrants, and evicted residents settled on Seoul’s peripheries, forming what are  known as “dal-dongnae.” Since the 1990s, numerous Seoul's moon villages have undergone redevelopment projects aimed at improving infrastructure, often displacing residents and wiping out local communities. This paper examines how Seoul's cultural narratives portray class spatialization, progressing from "moon villages" to "apartments" to "penthouses," highlighting how residential segregation shapes perceptions of class.

Migration in the Time of Industrialization: Developing Rubber Shoe Industries between Japan and Colonial Korea
Mindy Su (PhD, History)
This presentation explores the interdependent relationship between migration and the development of the rubber industries in both Japan proper and colonial Korea between 1920s and 1945. The rubber shoe industry in Hayashida, Kobe in western Japan began flourishing in the early 1920s—a period that also witnessed steady immigration of Korean colonial laborers, many of whom found employment at the rubber shoe factories and settled in Hayashida. Meanwhile, the komusin industry was mushrooming across the Korean peninsula, and it also had to do with migrants as well as flows of capital, industrial knowledge, and business experience from Hayashida, Kobe. 

Title Making of the Intimate State: Family Planning, Gender, and Reproductive Governance in South Korea, 1961-1996
So Jung Won (Yale College, History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health, Economics)
Between 1961 and 1996, South Korea's developmental state built comprehensive infrastructure to govern reproduction as a domain of national economic management—clinic networks, trained worker cadres, provider-controlled contraceptive technologies, and legal frameworks institutionalizing medical authority over fertility. This thesis argues that this infrastructure proved more durable than the demographic rationale that built it: when fertility fell below replacement in the 1980s, programs continued; when the state pivoted to pro-natalism after 1996, it repurposed rather than dismantled what it had built. The persistence of reproductive governance across reversed objectives reveals that its fundamental project was never fertility—it was authority over intimate life.

Korean Guest Workers in West Germany: The Role of the Korean Church in the Formation of the Diasporic Community, 1960-1980
Christina Lee (Yale College, History, Comparative Literature)
Approximately 10,000 nurses and 8,000 miners from South Korea migrated to West Germany under the guest worker program from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. This paper argues that the formation of a Korean diaspora was not simply the product of migration or bilateral agreements, but a historically contingent process of community-building. Drawing on materials from the Duisburg Church archives, it explores how the Korean church — both as an institution and a network — functioned as a site of mobilization, fostering shared identity and the emergence of a real, imagined 
transnational Korean community

Annotate translation of Yang Gui-ja’s I Desire What Is Forbidden to Me (1992, 나는소망한다 내게 금지된것을)
Gina Kim (Yale College, East Asian Languages and Literatures)
Yang Gui-ja’s I Desire What Is Forbidden to Me (1992, 『 나는 소망한다 내게 금지된 것을 』) is often read as a feminist reversal in which a woman claims the power to objectify men. This annotated translation argues instead that the novel’s central subject is self-narration driven by a desire the protagonist cannot admit to herself: the desire to be singular. She uses diaries and ideological language to control how her story appears. The novel tracks the failure of that control. Its final shift from her first-person voice to three posthumous documents shows how the self she tried to secure as extraordinary becomes part of an ordinary public record.

Asymmetry in Cross-Linguistic Interference: Korean Vowels in Intrasentential Code-Switching
Kristen Kim (Yale College, Ethics, Politics, & Economics, Linguistics)
Heritage speakers of Korean who are dominant in English face the unique challenge of experiencing phonological interference from their dominant language while simultaneously navigating social pressures to maintain cultural identity through linguistic choices. Existing works explore phonetic interference effects, but few investigate whether speakers strategically manage phonetic variation to express identity. This thesis explores the gap between production and identity in code-switching research. More specifically, it addresses three linked research questions: (1) Do heritage speakers' Korean vowels shift toward English during code-switching? (2) Does identity and language dominance predict phonetic shifts?