Dr. Jin-Hyung So is a Senior Research Fellow at the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University. His field of expertise is East Asian political thought, with particular interests in kingship, bureaucracy, and Joseon society. His current research focuses on translation, circulation, and transformation of knowledge between Europe and East Asia from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, and their intellectual-historical implications. He is co-author of Remapping the World from East Asia: Towards a Global History of the Ricci Map (University of Hawai’i Press, 2024). His recent articles include “The East Asian Translation of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and Chains of Translation” (2021), “Joseon Intellectuals’ Reading of Western Translations: The Case of Jeon Byeong-Hun’s Cheongsin Cheolhak Tongpyeon” (2022), “State Responses to Catholicism before the Shinyu Persecution and Their Political Significance” (2022), “Gaoli Zhiming Shilüe: An Intercultural, Interlaced Text between the Jesuits in Shanghai and the Missions Étrangères de Paris in Seoul” (2023), and “The Formation and Refraction of Western Concepts in Byeokwi Sinpyeon: Focusing on Debates on Catholicism” (2025).

Dr. Chung-Yeol Kim is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences, Seoul National University. His research focuses on East Asian political thought, modern and contemporary Korean political thought, and comparative political theory. His publications include “The Origin of the Reformist Intellectuals’ Self-Deprecating Mentality: Effects of the Progressive Conception of Time in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea” (2012), “The Politics of Democratic and Procedural Legitimacy: New Ideas of Legitimacy in the Independence Club Movement in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea” (2017), “The Tension between Political Necessity and Ethical Ideals: Toward an Analytical Framework for Confucian Political Thought in the Joseon Dynasty” (2020), and “Balance in the Governance Concept of the Shujing: Focusing on the Idea of Virtue (德)” (2022), among others.

Professor Ji-Ye Song is a Visiting Professor at the College of International Studies, Korea University, where she teaches in the Global Korean Studies program. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of International Affairs, Seoul National University. Her research interests include East Asian international relations history and postcolonial studies, with particular attention to understanding the Korean Peninsula’s historical experiences in the global political context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She received her Ph.D. with a dissertation comparing the colonial processes of Korea and Vietnam, focusing on protectorate treaties. Her major works include “The Reception of ‘National Self-Determination’ and the February 8th Independence Movement,” “The Birth of Norms in Inter-Korean Dialogue: A Constructivist Perspective on the 1970s Inter-Korean Talks,” and “Shifts in International Political Perceptions in Cold War Unified Vietnam: Party Congress Reports and Tạp chí Cộng sản” (forthcoming).

Professor Jong-Uk Hong is a faculty member at the Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University. He received his B.A. in Korean History from Seoul National University and his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo. He previously served as a specialist at the Embassy of Korea in Japan and taught at Doshisha University before joining Seoul National University in 2015. His research interests include ideological conversions of leftist intellectuals during the colonial period, theories of endogenous development in modern Korean historiography, and the formation and evolution of North Korean historiography. He is also interested in applying digital humanities methodologies to historical studies. His books include 転向者たちの朝鮮: 帝国/植民地の統合と亀裂 (2011), Rereading Kajimura Hideki’s Theory of Endogenous Development (co-authored, 2014), Thought Control and Conversion Policies under Japanese Colonial Rule (2024), and Nation and Revolution: The Ideology and Practice of Colonial Socialism (2025). He has also co-translated Deconstructing World History (2009) and Historical Ethnography of Modern Korea (2015).

Associate Professor Jun-Young Chung is on the faculty of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Sociology from Seoul National University and has served as a visiting researcher at Kyoto University and as a research professor at the Hallym University Institute of Japanese Studies. His research focuses on historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge, particularly on how modern academic disciplines developed and institutionalized in Korea. His publications include “Racialized Blood and Colonial Medicine,” “The Library System of Imperial Japan and Keijō Imperial University Library,” and “Social Scientists in the Context of the Korean War and the Cold War.” His books include The Faculty of Law and Letters at Keijō Imperial University and Korean Studies (monograph) and co-authored volumes such as Colonial Power and Modern Knowledge, Keijō Imperial University and East Asian Studies, and Colonial Private Professional Schools: Another Origin of Korean Universities. Together with colleagues, he continues to develop new perspectives on the history of higher education in Korea.

Associate Professor Jong-Hak Kim teaches in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University. He also serves on the boards of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, the Institute for Future Strategy, the Institute for Japanese Studies, and the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at SNU. His research interests include modern Korean political and diplomatic history, the history of political thought, and conceptual history. He previously worked as a Research Fellow at the Northeast Asian History Foundation and as Assistant Professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, where he also served as Head of the Diplomatic History Research Center.

Professor Kim has edited and compiled numerous collections of historical documents, including Modern Korean Diplomatic Documents (20 vols., 2010–2018), Sources on Modern Korea’s International Relations (2012), and Collection of Documents on Korea–Japan Treaties (Northeast Asian History Foundation, 2020). His major monographs include The Origins of the Enlightenment Party and Secret Diplomacy (2017) and A Biography of Heungseon Daewongun (2021). His translations include Simhaeng ilgi: The Treaty of Ganghwa Recorded by Joseon (2010), Studies on Modern Japan–Korea Relations (2 vols., 2013/2016), Shinron (2016), and the Korean Translation of the Chosŏn Office Documents (5 vols., 2021–2025).

He has received several awards for his scholarship, including the 43rd Wolbong Academic Book Prize (2018), the Seoul National University Outstanding Thesis Award in Social Sciences (M.A. thesis, 2006; Ph.D. dissertation, 2015), and the Best Research Paper Award from the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (2021).