The Values and Identity Team focuses on the new configurations of values and identities that have emerged in the 21st century Korean society.

Korea entered the 21st century with rapid economic growth and compressed modernization over fifty years. While values and identities have long been formed through complex historical trajectories, diverse and novel patterns of value and identity have become increasingly manifest in the present century. It is true that a variety of values and identities—shaped around religion, generation, region, gender, and social class—had long coexisted. Yet, with the accelerated transition toward an increasingly multicultural society in the 21st century, the diversification of social groups has intensified, and the tensions and conflicts among their respective identities and values have become more conspicuous.
The Values and Identity Team seeks to analyze these phenomena in contemporary Korea from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including religious studies, geography, women’s studies, sociology, migration studies, and cultural studies. The team’s aim is to carry out research that contributes to the construction of a theoretical framework for understanding the multi-layered identities that emerge under conditions of multiculturalism and multireligiosity.