RESEARCH INTERESTS

twentieth-century Korean diasporas; migration and displacement; gender, childhood, and the family; Cold War division; letters and diaries

BIOGRAPHY

Hannah Y. Park’s research examines modern Korean diasporas, migration and the family, and Cold War division, with a focus on letters and diaries. Her current book project, Writing Home: Remapping Korea’s Separated Families through the Epistolary Lens, traces histories of separation, mediation, and (non-)reunion in twentieth-century Korean families, treating letters as both sources and sites of encounter. Locating tensions between “homeland” and “family,” the project draws on the personal correspondence of five distinct but interrelated cases: 1) an imprisoned Korean independence activist writing to his family across the Pacific, 2) a Korean-Japanese couple separated during the Korean War, 3) North Korean war orphans sent to Eastern Europe and abruptly returned, 4) South Korean birth mothers and adoptees writing to and/or about one another, and 5) Sakhalin Koreans mailing letters to South Korea through Japan in hopes of reunion. Park’s work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Korea Foundation, the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, and the Korean Collections Consortium of North America.

DISSERTATION

Writing Home, Writing Hope: Epistolary Kinship Across Korea's Divided Diasporas

PUBLICATIONS

“Home and Hope for a Korean Family in Exile: Jessie’s Diary as a Source of Wartime Refuge and Resilience (1938-1946).” Korea Journal 65.4 (2025) 347-373. doi: 10.25024/kj.2025.65.4.347

NEWS

Teaching Fellow Spotlight, Autumn 2025 Department of History Newsletter