Eugene Y. Park
Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History
Eugene Y. Park is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History. Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in southern California, he received a B.A. (1991) in History from UCLA, an M.A. (1993) in Regional Studies East Asia from Harvard University, and Ph.D. (1999) in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, also from Harvard. Over the years, Park has taught Korea and East Asia surveys, undergraduate seminars on Korea’s military tradition from a comparative perspective, and Korea field-review graduate proseminars. He is the author of Between Dreams and Reality: The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600–1894 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007), which analyzes the military’s place in the seemingly Confucian literati-dominated society and culture of early modern Korea.
Currently, Park is working on a project that reconstructs the history of an obscure chungin (“middle people”) family of early modern Korea and addresses crucial debates surrounding the characterization of Korean society. Neither aristocrats nor commoners, the chungin offer a unique vantage point. As government-employed specialists in various areas, between 1600 and 1880 they invested their increasing cultural and economic capital in challenging the aristocracy’s monopoly on political power. Then during the reform era from 1880 to 1904 when many chungin achieved prominence among political, business, and cultural circles, they tended to reject what they deemed backward customs, while commoners imitated elite practices. Conventional scholarship highlights some famous chungin that ultimately “collaborated” with the Japanese, but Park’s research shows that the Japanese take-over of Korea actually stripped most chungin of their newfound leadership roles. Overall for Korea, the colonial rule (1910–45) produced a rupture with the past and crystalized family narratives wherein now every Korean has a surname and an ancestral seat associated with it—implying that (s)he is of royal or aristocratic descent. From the perspectives of invented traditions and hegemonic discourse, Park’s project raises some fundamental questions about Korean modernity and historical agency.
Courses Taught (As Schedule Allows)
For current course listings, consult the Course Directory.
- HIST 120 Korea History Before 1860
- HIST 121 Korean History After 1860
- HIST 206 Korea’s Military Tradition
