Peter D. HERSHOCK is Director of the Asian Studies Development Program and Education Specialist at the East-West Center in Honolulu, and holds a Ph.D. in Asian and Comparative Philosophy from the University of Hawai‘i. His philosophical work makes use of Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues of global concern. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books on Buddhism, Asian philosophy and contemporary issues, including: Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch’an Buddhism (1996); Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age (1999); Chan Buddhism (2005); Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2006); Changing Education: Leadership, Innovation and Development in a Globalizing Asia Pacific (edited, 2007); Educations and their Purposes: A Conversation among Cultures (edited, 2008); Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (2012); Public Zen, Personal Zen: A Buddhist Introduction (2014); Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence (edited, 2015); and Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation (forthcoming).

Cheehyung Harrison KIM is assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His research and teaching interests include socialism, North Korea, everyday life, and industrialism. His book, Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953-1961, forthcoming from Columbia University Press, is about the experience of factory workers in postwar North Korea and the transnational condition of industrialism.

Byong Won LEE received his PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Washington in 1974 and his MA in Ethnomusicology from the same school in 1971. Prior to coming to the US in 1967, he attended the Graduate School of Seoul National University, majoring in Korean Music Theory, and received a B.A. in Korean Music Theory from Seoul National University in 1964. His publications include: the entire entry for Korea in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th edition; Buddhist Music of Korea (1987); Styles and Esthetics in Korean Traditional Music (1977); and numerous articles and edited works on Korean music.

In 2001, Dr. Lee authored, coordinated, and served as the main lecturer for the month-long “Workshop on Korean Music for Overseas Musicologists,” co-sponsored by the Korea Foundation and the National Gukak Center. He has twice been a Fulbright scholar in Korea (1972–73 and 1980–81), and was also a visiting professor at the Academy of Korean Studies (1996–98). He served as the first President of the Association for Korean Music Research (AKMR) in 1995–96 and as the Secretary-General for the 26th International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) in 1980–81 and for the First International Conference on Korean Studies in 1994. In 1990 he was also invited to UNESCO’s “Integral Study of the Silk Road Maritime Route Expeditions” as a senior scholar.

Sang-Hyop LEE is Professor in the Department of Economics and Director of Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. He is also the Asian teams coordinator of the National Transfer Accounts project. His studies focus on population aging and social welfare issues. In particular, he has investigated the linkage between population aging and the labor market issues, with particular emphasis on Asian economies. Given its empirical and applied nature, a substantial portion of his research involves estimation of economic models using data sets.

He has published numerous articles including 11 edited books focusing issues on these research topics. His recent edited books include Aging, Economic Growth, and Old-Age Security in Asia (2011, Edward Elgar), Inequality, Inclusive Growth, and Fiscal Policy in Asia (2015, Routledge), Social Policies in an Age of Austerity (2015, Edward Elgar), and the Demographic Dividend and Population Aging in Asia and the Pacific (2016, special issue of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing).

Sunyoung PARK is associate professor in the departments of East Asian Languages and Cultures and of Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015). Her research is broadly focused on the literary and cultural history of modern and contemporary Korea, which she approaches from the varying perspectives of Marxism, postcolonial theory, transnational feminism, and cultural studies. In synergy with this research, Prof. Park is also active as an editor and translator of Korean fiction into English, which has resulted, among others, in the publication of two collections of short stories: On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea (Cornell East Asian Series, 2010) and Ready-Made Bodhisattva and Other Science Fiction Stories from South Korea (Kaya Press, 2019). She is currently at work on a monographic critical treatment of science fictional literature and film in South Korea during the last fifty years, and she is the editor of a forthcoming collection of critical essays titled Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea (University of Michigan Press, 2019).

Young-A PARK is Associate Professor in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She earned her BA and MA degrees in Anthropology from Seoul National University and her PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. She has particular research interest in the intersections among culture, media and politics. Her book, Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea was published in 2015 by Stanford University Press. The book investigates South Korea’s post-authoritarian reform era and how independent filmmakers with activist backgrounds were able to mobilize and transform themselves into important players in state cultural institutions and in negotiations with the purveyors of capital. Instead of simply labeling the alliances “selling out” or “co-optation,” this book explores the new spaces, institutions, and conversations which emerged and shows how independent filmmakers played a key role in national protests against trade liberalization, actively contributing to the creation of the very idea of a “Korean national cinema” worthy of protection. In addition to her Korean film industry research, she is conducting a new line of research on North Korean refugees in South Korea. She plans to explore North Korean refugees’ strategies in obtaining cultural membership in South Korea and the formation of new transnational migrant identities.

Maya STILLER is assistant professor of Korean art and visual culture at the University of Kansas and currently a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Department of Art History and Architecture. Her research focuses on the art and visual culture of Chosŏn period (1392-1910) Korea. Maya Stiller is currently completing a book manuscript entitled The Making of Place: Cultural Elites and Kŭmgangsan in Pre-Modern Korea, which discusses the development of a sacred mountain from a Buddhist pilgrimage site to a symbol of Korean cultural identity. Her most recent article, “The Politics of Commemoration: Patronage of Monk-General Shrines in Late Chosŏn Korea,” was published in the Journal of Asian Studies. An article entitled "Amitābha Triads Concealed in Craggy Cliffs: An Analysis of Sculpture Burial in Fourteenth/Fifteenth Century Korea" is scheduled for publication in Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie in December 2018. Maya Stiller has also contributed to the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (editors: Robert E. Buswell and Donald S. Lopez) published in 2014. Her research projects have received support from Harvard’s Korea Institute, the ACLS/Robert Ho Family Foundation and the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Seoul National University.

Myungji YANG is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. She earned her PhD in Sociology in 2012 and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Korean Studies Institute, University of Southern California, in 2015-16. Her research interests include the political economy of development, class politics and social inequality, democracy and civil society, globalization, and East Asia. Her work on the urban middle class and democracy in South Korea has appeared in Sociological Inquiry, Critical Asian Studies, and Korea Observer. Her first book, From Miracle to Mirage: The Making and Unmaking of the Korean Middle Class, 1960-2015, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press. Capturing the emergence, reproduction, and fragmentation of the Korean middle class, it demonstrates how the seemingly successful state project of building a middle-class society contained the seeds of that society’s decline. It argues that the current fragility of the middle class was embedded in the very development strategies and speculative urbanism that led its rise in the first place. She is now working on a new project about conservative politics and activism in South Korea. She is interested in how the right wing has maintained its hegemonic power and how it has shaped the post-democratization trajectory in Korea.