On January 23, at 2:00 p.m., the first lecture in the doctoral dissertation lecture series organized by the Modernity and Development Team of the SNU Contemporary Korean Studies (서울대학교 현대한국종합연구단 ‘근대성과 발전사팀’) was held.

This seminar, held under the theme “The Cold War and Development in East Asia: Across Militarism, Science and Technology, and Local Society,” brought together recent doctoral dissertation research from various fields of modern Korean history—including militarism, science and technology, and local society—to present findings and discuss the issues they raise.

The first presentation was given by Dr. Ha, Jaeyoung (하재영) of Tsinghua University in China, under the title “Making South Korea’s High-Mountain (高山) Frontier, 1945–1972: A Modern History of Mt. Taebaek through Trans-Pacific Environmental History” (남한의 高山 프론티어 만들기, 1945-1972: 트랜스퍼시픽 환경사로 보는 태백산의 현대사). The original title of his doctoral dissertation is “Frontier Above the Clouds: A Trans-Pacific History of Mountain Engineering in South Korea” (UC San Diego Ph.D. Dissertation, 2024)—a research topic of notable interest from the perspectives of the history of science and technology, environmental history, and the history of development.

In the discussion that followed, held simultaneously in the in-person classroom and online, early-career researchers—including graduate students from the Department of Korean History at Seoul National University—shared a range of perspectives on modern Korean history, development, and environmental history. In particular, the discussion delved into the imperialist implications of the United States’ overseas frontier-expansion policy within the orbit of American aid to South Korea.