The REAL DMZ PROJECT Committee presents a Humanities Lecture with Professor Keunsik Jung, the director at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. This program is organized in conjunction with the REAL DMZ PROJECT 2016. While exploring Cheorwon with researchers from the Peace and Humanities Research Group at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, Professor Jung drew his humanistic and artist emotions with the keyword “ruins” and considered it from a variety of perspectives. He sees ruins as a gazing point, something that makes us reflect on ourselves, while the ruins, though empty spaces, still contain the vestiges of vanished things which are not completely destroyed. With this point of view, he imagines the conception of new lives.

“When 20^th century Korea is seen, plagued with colonialism and the violence of cold-war division, Cheorwon is a representative space of these forces and its ruins summarize them. The Labor Party Office building of Cheorwon and other ruins have a unique aesthetic. They are not mere ruins but aesthetic ruins which create a peculiar aura. The sky can be seen through the destroyed walls of the Labor Party Office building, and the wind blows across the sky. These skies and winds make us feel that this is not an empty, but a life-conceiving ruin. At the site of transformation, between limited space and infinity, vital forces dwell, shown by little tufts of grass growing on the destroyed walls.”
– Keunsik Jung

Keunsik Jung
Professor Keunsik Jung graduated from the Department of Sociology at Seoul National University as well as its graduate school. He has worked at Chonnam National University and is now working at the Department of Sociology at Seoul National University. Professor Jung has held visiting professor positions at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Kyoto University, the University of Chicago, and Free University of Berlin. After working as the president of the Critical Sociological Association of Korea, he became and is currently president of both the Korean Oral History Association, and of the Korean Cold War Association. He was also the vice director of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Seoul National University, and is now the director of both the Northeast Asia Center in the Seoul National University Asia Center, and of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. Professor Jung has authored several publications, including Legacy of Colony, Formation of Nation, and Democracy as well as (Post) Cold War and Korean Democracy.