What are the opening hours?

Monday 8am - 12pm Tuesday 8am - 12pm 1pm - 5pm Wednesday 8am - 12pm 1pm - 5pm Thursday 8am - 12pm 1pm - 5pm Friday 8am - 12pm 1pm - 5pm

UCLA Center for Korean Studies

Home
United States
Los Angeles, CA
UCLA Center for Korean Studies

Call Directions Website Contact the university

The University of California, Los Angeles houses the largest and most prestigious Korean program

10/15/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Book Talk] Im Colloquium of Korean Christianity with author Jonathan Cheng
- Wednesday, October 21, 2026
- 2:00-3:15 PM
- Haines Hall , room 118

Jonathan Cheng, the Wall Street Journal’s China bureau chief and former Korea bureau chief, takes us deep inside Pyongyang, a city once so dominated by Christianity that it was known as the “Jerusalem of the East.” Cheng introduces us to Samuel Moffett, a Presbyterian missionary from Madison, Indiana, who would venture into Pyongyang at the end of the nineteenth century and build a remarkable following—one that would include the Kim family that today presides over one of the world’s harshest persecutors of the Christian faith.

At the center of this story is North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, son of two fervent Christians and progenitor of an ideology known as Kimilsungism, an exercise in idolatry that has elevated him, and his successor son and grandson, to Christlike status, from the humble manger where he was born to the subway seat on which the venerated leader once placed his posterior, cordoned off as if it were a religious relic.

Drawing on letters, diaries, and never-before-unearthed archival material that temper and often contradict the glorious historical record promoted by Kim Il Sung’s legions of hagiographers, Korean Messiah tells the true story of a country shrouded in fictions.

We hope you will join us, and please share this announcement and flyer with students, faculty, and colleagues who may be interested.

10/13/2026

The Blakemore Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2027 Blakemore Language Fellowships for an academic year of intensive language study at approved language programs in Asia during the 2027/2028 academic year. We would appreciate your sharing this opportunity with your students and other potential applicants.

Blakemore Freeman Fellowships are awarded to graduating seniors, college graduates, graduate students and young/mid-career professionals for advanced study of Chinese (in Taiwan), Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Khmer, Thai, or Vietnamese in Asia. Study of Chinese in Beijing is available as a Blakemore Fellowship. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the United States, have completed (at minimum) the third year of study of the Asian language, and are ready to advance to professional fluency.

Blakemore Kingfisher Art History Language Fellowships will be awarded for study of Chinese or Korean in East Asia. These grants are open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada, and to foreign nationals studying in colleges or universities in the United States or Canada, who have a well-demonstrated intent to study the pre-twentieth century history of Chinese or Korean art at the doctoral level. Applicants must have received a bachelor's degree by the start of a grant and have completed (at minimum) two years of classroom study of the language in rigorous college-level language programs.

Applications for all fellowship programs may be submitted at https://blakemorefoundation.communityforce.com with a deadline of December 30, 2026. More detailed information on our fellowship programs is available on our website at www.blakemorefoundation.org. Candidates are welcome to contact us directly by email or phone with questions or concerns.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 206.427.4838

10/08/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Roundtable Discussion] Korean Studies and the Philippines
- Tuesday, October 13, 2026
- 2:15 - 3:45 PM
- Royce Hall, Room 243

The roundtable features three presentations by Ateneo de Manila University faculty:

"Sustaining Korean Studies Beyond the Center: A Local Realities Model from Philippines "
by Aurea C. Javier (Director of the Korean Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University)

"Recontextualizing Korean: Short-Form Media and Language Practice in the Philippines"
by Jeremiah Estela Magoncia (Instructor, Korean Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University)

"Implementing the Seasonal Workers Program between the Philippines and Korea: Critical Junctures and Institutional Change"
by Diana I. Mendoza (Director, Ricardo Leong Institute for Global and Area Studies; Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Ateneo de Manila University)

We hope you will join us, and please share this announcement and flyer with students, faculty, and colleagues who may be interested!

10/07/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Film Screening + Director Q&A] There Are No Words
- Thursday, October 29, 2026
- 2:00-4:50 PM
- Darren Screening Room, UCLA

Please join us for a special screening of There Are No Words, a documentary by Korean Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee, followed by a Q&A with the director and Professor Gina Kim from UCLA's School of Theater, Film & Television

The film is free and open to the public. RSVP required.

About the Film
In this deeply personal documentary, Lee investigates the silences surrounding her mother’s death and her family’s past. Moving between intimate family history and South Korea’s turbulent political history, There Are No Words explores memory, migration, intergenerational trauma, and the ways political violence reverberates through family and diaspora.

2025 | 98 minutes | Documentary Feature | English and Korean

About the Filmmaker
Min Sook Lee is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of labour, migration, war, memory, and social justice. Her acclaimed films include Tiger Spirit, Hogtown: The Politics of Policing, The Real Inglorious Bastards, and Migrant Dreams. Her films have received a Canadian Screen Award, the Donald Brittain Gemini Award, the Hot Docs Award for Best Canadian Feature, and the Canadian Hillman Prize. There Are No Words premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it received an Honourable Mention for Best Canadian Feature, and later won Best Documentary at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. Lee is an Associate Professor at OCAD University, where she teaches documentary and visual storytelling.

This event is presented in conjunction with Professor Gina Kim’s course, FTV 415: Themes and Issues – Media for Social Justice.

Co-organized by: UCLA Center for Korean Studies and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Co-sponsored by: Academy of Korean Studies, GYOPO, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, UCLA Asian American Studies Department, UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications and UCLA Department of Labor Studies

RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfcysK8PmVj3mM3wxkTZgkQ3h9Dm25gkeDLeDMEOtczqgilfg/viewform

10/06/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Book Talk] Not Tiger Moms: From Reproductive Exclusion to Reproductive Justice for Asian American Families with Miliann Kang
- Wednesday, October 14, 2026
- 2:00-3:30 PM
- Haines Hall 279
Professor Kang will share insights from her new book, Not Tiger Moms: Reimagining Asian American Motherhood, which examines why motherhood has become such a charged site of gender, racial, and class conflict. Her talk will trace the histories and current politics that shape Asian American motherhood in the U.S. and show how Asian American mothers challenge and rewrite the terms of "model minority motherhood" through the framework of reproductive exclusion.
Miliann Kang is a Professor in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in Sociology and Asian/Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of The Managed Hand: Race, Gender and the Body in Beauty Service Work (which won multiple book awards from the American Sociological Association and National Women's Studies Association). Her most recent book, Not Tiger Moms: Reimagining Asian American Motherhood was just released by the University of California Press. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar with Ewha University, and a Korea Foundation Fellow with Seoul National University, researching work and family issues for Asian and Asian American women in transnational contexts. She formerly served as Director of Diversity Advancement for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Her writing has been published in Gender and Society, Contexts, Gender, Work & Organization, Meridians, Newsweek, The Conversation, Women’s Review of Books, Huffington Post, the Korea Times and Ms.

We hope you will join us, and please share this announcement and flyer with students, faculty, and colleagues who may be interested.

10/01/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Book Talk] Miss Kathi, Humanitarian Work in North Korea

- Tuesday, October 20, 2026
- 5:30–7:15 PM
- U.S. Bank Tower, Downtown Los Angeles

Join Asia Society Southern California for a conversation with humanitarian aid worker Kathi Zellweger and former CNN Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Chinoy about Miss Kathi: Saving Lives in North Korea, Zellweger's account of 75 humanitarian visits to one of the world's most isolated countries.

In a time when human connection and dignity are easily withheld from the most vulnerable, Zellweger's story is especially worth hearing. Across nearly three decades of journeys to North Korea, the Swiss aid worker befriended local doctors, nurses and caregivers, negotiated with wary officials, and brought food and medicine to people the world had largely ignored. Chinoy brings his own perspective from seventeen trips to the country.

This is a rare chance to hear firsthand what life and aid work inside North Korea truly look like.

Copies of Miss Kathi will be available for purchase. There will be a book signing following the discussion.

CKS is participating in this event as a promotional partner. Please use this code to receive complimentary tickets: CKS1

Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-miss-kathi-humanitarian-work-in-north-korea-tickets-2001010258549?aff=CKS

04/28/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Book Talk] Against Abandonment: Repertoire of Solidarity in South Korean Protest

- Thursday, May 14, 2026
- 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
- Bunche Hall, Room 10383

About the Book:

Against Abandonment: Repertoire of Solidarity in South Korean Protest (Stanford University Press, 2025) offers insight into the utility and futility of protesting precarity under neoliberal capitalism. Based on long-term ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with key labor and social movement activists, the book follows the protests of minoritized workers, especially women employed in precarious jobs, as they contend with what it means to be treated as disposable and what it takes to resist. Long-term protest camps, life-threatening hunger strikes, grueling prostrations, perilous high-altitude occupations are agonizing to perform and to witness but often powerful as affective catalyst of change. Through dramatic performances and rituals that repeat across time and space, Against Abandonment finds that protesters cultivate repertoires of solidarity as a relational force that binds people and worlds together in a collective praxis of refusal. In doing so, Against Abandonment builds upon intersectional, transnational, and abolitionist feminist theorizing that has long emphasized the centrality of building relations of care and community in place-based struggles against capitalist abandonment.

Moderated by Tobias Higbie, Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) at UCLA, it will begin with brief comments by Jennifer Jihye Chun (Asian America Studies at UCLA) and Ju Hui Judy Han (Gender Studies at UCLA), which will be followed by an open ended dialogue among panelists, with Jong Bum Kwon (Webster University), Hannah Appel (Anthropology at UCLA), and Zeynep Korkman (Gender Studies at UCLA).

Additional information about speakers included at
https://www.international.ucla.edu/cks/event/17646

04/28/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: Spring Festival of World Music: Music of Korea

- Sunday, May 10, 2026
- 12:00 PM
- Lani Hall, Schoenberg Music Building, UCLA

This concert brings together performances from UCLA's Music of Korea and Intercultural Improvisation: Cultures in Musical Dialogue courses, celebrating Korea's rich musical heritage alongside cross-cultural creative practice. The program features traditional and contemporary works shaped by both historical roots and collaborative experimentation, with students performing on a diverse range of Korean instruments including gayageum (12-string zither), janggu (hourglass drum), danso (bamboo flute), as well as cross-cultural music ensemble. Repertoire includes beloved folk songs such as Arirang and Doraji, vibrant percussive traditions like Samulnori, and newly devised pieces created through an improvisation-based process. Embracing both tradition and innovation, the beauty of traditional folk music and cross-cultural creativity come together to shape each work organically, resulting in a dynamic musical dialogue and shared creativity across cultures.

More information, including about parking and Mother's Day gifts, can be found at
https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/event/music-of-korea-and-intercultural-improvisation-ensemble/

Event on CKS website:
https://www.international.ucla.edu/cks/event/17664

04/28/2026

UPCOMING EVENT: [Book Talk] A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation

- Thursday, April 30, 2026
- 5:00 PM
- Bunche Hall, Rm 10383

When Japanese imperial rule ended in August 1945, the Korean peninsula erupted with hopes and aspirations that had been bottled up for nearly forty years. This electrifying excitement jolted Koreans into action everywhere. Peasants occupied Japanese-owned farmlands, workers seized control of factories, and women demanded political and economic equality. Yet, within months, those aspirations would collide with the realities of a U.S. military occupation, giving way to a bitter contest over the future of Korea that would ultimately end in political tragedy.

Drawing from his recently published book, A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2025), historian Kornel Chang will discuss how liberation was experienced from the ground up by ordinary Koreans while also showing how U.S. occupation forces reshaped - and often foreclosed - the possibilities that liberation had seem to open. Consumed by fears of instability and communist influence, the military high command, led by Lieutenant General John R. Hodge, clashed with Korean and American reformers who were pushing for democratization and social change. Chang's talk recovers a moment of genuine political possibility - one of competing futures in which different choices may have led to different outcomes. Division and war, he contends, were not inevitable. North and South is not the way it had to be.

This talk is moderated by Albert Park, Claremont-McKenna College (The Claremont Colleges).

Receive a 30% discount with promo code AFL30 at
www.hup.harvard.edu

More information about the speakers included at
https://www.international.ucla.edu/cks/event/17585

04/21/2026

CONTEST: 2026 CKS "Comfort Women" Creative Project Contest

In 2022, the Center for Korean Studies received a gift to create a permanent endowment to support creative projects by UCLA students and faculty, together with an online archive, research, and programming.

The contest is open to all UCLA undergraduate and graduate students who are enrolled in the 2026 Spring quarter. Each work must address the topic of "comfort women" in some way in literary (poetry, prose, or video of spoken word), visual (such as drawing, painting, print, textiles, sculpture, ceramics, photography, film, video of performance), or multi-media format.

We will have both undergraduate and graduate student divisions with separate first prize awards of $500 in each division. Second place ($300 Visa gift card) and third place ($150 Visa gift card) awards may be in either division. Depending on the number of entries, we may increase the number of second and third prizes awarded. There will also be non-monetary prizes.

Students should read this brief fact sheet on "comfort women" to familiarize themselves with the topic:

https://apjjf.org/asia-pacific-journal-feature/4829/article

Submissions are due by 11:59 pm on Sunday, May 17, 2026. The awards ceremony will be in late May.

Submission Portal: https://forms.international.ucla.edu/ApplicationForm.aspx?YHbbgjRDrfhNlUG0I5gagAYpgtCTk6TKw7IyDy6TsKA=

Release Form: https://forms.international.ucla.edu/ApplicationForm.aspx?YHbbgjRDrfhNlUG0I5gagAYpgtCTk6TKw7IyDy6TsKA=

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Jennifer Jung-Kim at [email protected].

Address

Los Angeles, CA
90095

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 12pm
Tuesday	8am - 12pm
	1pm - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 12pm
	1pm - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 12pm
	1pm - 5pm
Friday	8am - 12pm
	1pm - 5pm

Telephone

+13108253284

Website

http://www.international.ucla.edu/korea/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when UCLA Center for Korean Studies posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.