Doctoral Student Spotlight: Hannah Y. Park

1. In your dissertation, “Writing Home, Writing Hope: Epistolary Kinship Across Korea’s Divided Diasporas,” you make the argument that letters served as a kind of mediator and a tool for cultivating hopefulness in the midst of deep uncertainty. Can you elaborate on this theme?

Yes, my dissertation emerged from a persisting curiosity about the role and impact of letter-writing—especially letters exchanged among families separated across borders. While letters have been used by historians mainly as a source of reference for factual information (e.g. evidence of certain historically significant events or characteristics of a historically significant person’s life), I wanted to take into account the form as much as the content of the letter, examining how epistolary writing not just reflects but also constructs a relationship. Letters are interesting because they often serve as a “simulacrum of presence” in the physical absence of the writer, allowing relationships to be maintained across distance and time. In my dissertation, I use the term “epistolary kinship” to refer to familial ties sustained through epistolary forms. Specifically, I look at letters exchanged among Korean families separated initially by colonialism and war and later more permanently by Cold War divides. 

The main argument of my dissertation is that letter-writing was a critical medium through which diasporic Korean families sought to not only transcend their sense of alienation but also transform the sociopolitical, economic, and/or cultural conditions that restricted their mobility. For example, in one of my chapters, I examine the letters of Koreans on Sakhalin Island (USSR) who were trying to reach family members in South Korea from the 1950s to the 1980s. Several thousand letters were delivered through a Korean-Japanese civic organization because they could not be sent directly, and those letters later became the foundation for family reunions in Japan and ultimately Sakhalin Koreans’ repatriation to South Korea.

By demonstrating how letter-writing was a tool for displaced and divided Korean families to actively (re)create spaces of home and hope, I want to contribute to discussions on Korean migration and the family in the context of the Cold War, while offering insight into the role of letter-writing more broadly for displaced and divided communities, both past and present. I also hope the presence of certain letters in my project can ultimately highlight the absence of others—the countless instances of separated families in which letter correspondence was and still is impossible, forfeiting the basic right to know whether their loved ones are even alive.

2. On the theme of diaspora, you individualize experiences inside of the larger migratory framework. How does individualization reframe the narrative?

In my research, by exploring individual cases, I try to emphasize the differences among Korean migration trajectories, challenging the notion of a single, unifying Korean diaspora. I stress the importance of individual identifications, such as language, gender, class, religion, and generation, in understanding Korea’s many diasporas and the diversity of their experiences. Tracing diasporic history is inherently an attempt to collect fragmented histories and map them out in a meaningful way. For this dissertation, I have chosen “exceptional typical” cases that push us to consider the far-reaching and long-lasting impact of the Cold War, especially relating to separated families. I believe the lens of an individual or a single family urges us to consider the legacies and continuities of historical events across borders and bounded periods. I also intentionally use the framework of diaspora to de-center the nation-state (particularly the U.S. and Korea), so that Hawai’i, Japan, Korea, Poland, the mainland U.S., and Sakhalin Island, for instance, each become one geographical node among many.

2. You’ve been awarded several research grants. What kind of research did they support? Were you able to spend time in archives you would have otherwise not had access to? 

I received several research grants from the Committee on Korean Studies at the Center for East Asian Studies to visit the archives in South Korea. Through visits to the Independence Hall of Korea, the Oral History Archives at the National Institute of Korean History, and the Ministry of Unification’s Information Center on North Korea, I was able to gain access to key primary source materials for my dissertation, especially regarding Korean independence activists in Hawai’i, Sakhalin Koreans who repatriated to South Korea, and North Korean war orphans who were sent to Eastern Europe in the 1950s, respectively. Last summer, I received a travel grant from the Korean Collections Consortium of North America to visit the Harvard-Yenching Library’s Special Collections. There I found an incredibly rich collection of letters exchanged between a Korean artist-pastor Ye Yun-Ho and an American missionary Geraldine Fitch, the correspondence spanning across more than three decades. Those archival materials became the basis for a new chapter that I hadn’t initially planned.

4. What other projects and programs are you involved in at UChicago? What roles have you taken on and how have they shaped your graduate experience?

I’ve been actively involved with the Center for East Asian Studies at UChicago. Last fall, I had the chance to organize a two-day screening event with a documentary filmmaker who works on the Korean diaspora. It was exciting to see so many students and community members show up. I’ve also assisted with developing a course on Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Korea and translating for a colloquium on Korean women’s writings. I was grateful for the opportunity to broaden my intellectual horizons and get to know new people in the field. I have also served as the president of a faith-based graduate student organization, as a mentor for undergraduate students of color through the Leaders of Color initiative, and as a volunteer tutor through the Neighborhood Schools Program and ENoK, a registered student organization that supports the education of North Korean defectors residing in Hyde Park. All of these roles and experiences have led me to think about myself as a part of the wider campus community.
 

5. When you aren’t working on your research, what do you like to do to relax?

Beyond academic work, I enjoy going on nature walks with my family, listening to podcasts, and reading for fun.