Manufactured Landscape/Nature: The Story of the Han River

Speaker
Se-Mi Oh
Date
Thu May 20th 2021, 4:30 - 5:30pm
Event Sponsor
Center for East Asian Studies
Location
Zoom
Manufactured Landscape/Nature: The Story of the Han River

Recently, the city of Seoul has proposed a 360-million-dollar project to restore the Han River, which would entail the removal of concrete embankments along the shoreline to restore the river’s native flora and fauna species and wetlands, protect endangered migrant birds, and preserve natural flow of the water. This project is a reminder of how the city of Seoul in the post-industrial age is addressing the environmental and ecological destruction that the Han River underwent in recent decades. As the economic development beginning in the 1960s was named after it as “the miracle on the Han River,” the Han River has been at the front and the center of the nation’s developmentalist fervor. This presentation therefore looks into the initial stage of the development of the Han River to examine the place of urban planning and development in the context of the nationalist project of economic development by Park Chung Hee. In particular, it will discuss the development of an island called Yŏŭido and how it became a catalyst of the development of the shoreline of the river as well as the eventual expansion of the city into the south of the river, Kangnam.

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About the speaker:

Se-Mi Oh is Assistant Professor of Modern Korean History in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. Her current research focuses on architectural and urban practices in Seoul during the 1920s and 1930s. The book manuscript in progress entitled Surface Matters, Speech Matters: A Sedimentary History of Colonial Seoul examines the relationship between language, text, and media in tracing the discursive formation of modernity and colonialism in Korea through urban space. 

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