On February 13, at 2:00 p.m., the third 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 third presentation was given by Dr. Juyoung Lee (이주영) of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Under the title “Networking for Development: Interpersonal Relationships and Technical Cooperation in Cold War Taiwan and South Korea,” the lecture compared Taiwan and South Korea from the perspectives of the Cold War and science and technology, situating modern Korean history and the history of development within international relations. In particular, it raised intriguing points about how the informal dimensions of technological development can be historicized within the unfolding of the East Asian Cold War.

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—led a lively question-and-answer session. Because the study adopts a comparative-historical methodology, varied discussion also took place regarding its guiding questions and the process of collecting historical sources.