On April 16, 2024, the K-Future Team held its first Theory Atelier, centered on “Deconstructing (the Nation-State Frame of) ‘Korea,’” a lecture by philosopher Taewon Jin, Research Professor at the Archives of Democracy Movements (민주자료관), Sungkonghoe University. The Theory Atelier is a monthly academic program designed to create a space for theoretical experimentation in dialogue with Korean Studies. This first session was held online and consisted of a lecture followed by a discussion with the research team and audience.

Rather than presupposing “Korea” as a fixed cultural substance, Professor Jin treated it as an object of thought constituted through civic and ethnic nationalism, as well as the nation-state. In an age of uncertainty, when these frameworks are no longer self-evident, “Deconstructing ‘Korea’” was presented as an inquiry into the names and problematics through which Korean Studies might rethink “Korea.” Drawing on Derrida’s notion of the quasi-transcendental and the repetitive structure of post-discourses, the lecture examined whether “‘Korea’ has become past tense” amid the transitions of modernity, postmodernity, and the aftermath of Marxism.