Gyungbeen Lee (2024)
- Research title: “One nation is too few, Two nations are too many”: Self and Relations in Repatriatio
- Supervisor: Professor Uradyn Bulag
Contact
About
I am a PhD candidate funded by KFAS(Korean Foundation for Advanced Studies). I completed my Master’s in Anthropology at Seoul National University, and I also hold a BA in Politics and Anthropology from Seoul National University.
Research
My ongoing research focuses on repatriation movements in divided Korea, mainly working with two groups: “Unconverted Long-term Prisoners,” who seek repatriation to the North, and “Abductees,” who seek repatriation to the South. I am exploring how these people navigate their belongings under incompatible perspectives of the two Koreas on their nationality. Additionally, I am interested in how these groups are positioned as counterparts in exchanges between the two Koreas and what this reveals about anthropological understandings of social relations constituted through exchanges.
This project stems from my Master’s thesis, which is based on fieldwork conducted with an administrative body in South Korea that ostensibly governs the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. As this community consists of “displaced people” from these regions, I examined how practices of kinship intertwine with statehood and how nostalgia entails prefiguration.
I also worked with elderly “Camptown women,” who were involved in the sex industry in U.S. military camptowns in South Korea, primarily during the 1970s and 1980s. Engaging with anthropological discourse on representation, I co-authored a book that combines video art and experimentally arranged texts.
Research Interests
Self; alterity; reciprocity; anthropological theory; nation; two Koreas; the Cold War