The Kwangju Massacre after Thirty-Five Years: The Politics and Poetics of Witnessing: A Conversation with South Korean Writers LIM Chul-Woo and HAN Kang

South Korea’s vaunted path to democratization wound through the city of Kwangju, where the blood of civilians massacred by the military bathed the streets in May of 1980. As a turning point in the history of the country’s struggle for democracy, Kwangju has been variously commemorated and contested in the shifting tides of Korean politics ever since. Approaching the thirty-fifth anniversary of the momentous event, acclaimed Korean writers LIM Chul-Woo and HAN Kang will engage in a rare cross-generational conversation about the writer’s craft in the age of state terror, and ruminate on the meanings of Kwangju past and present after reading from their works of fiction, “The Red Room” (1988) and The Boy (2014).

Light Refreshments will be served.

This event is free and open to the public. It will be conducted in Korean with English interpretation.