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SPEAKER: Peter Banseok Kwon
DATE: Friday. June 5, 2026. 7:20PM (Seoul)
VENUE: Fifth floor (Conference Room) of FAST FIVE Tower (Namdaemun-ro 9-gil 24, Jung-gu, Seoul), a short walk from Exit 1 of Euljiro-1-ga Station (을지로입구역, Metro Line 2)
SUMMARY:
Cornerstone of the Nation (Harvard University Asia Center, 2024) is the first historical account of the complex alliance of military and civilian forces that catapulted South Korea’s conjoined militarization and industrialization under Park Chung Hee (1961–1979). Kwon reveals how Park’s secret program to build an independent defense industry spurred a total mobilization of business, science, labor, and citizenry, all of which converged in military-civilian forces that propelled an unprecedented model of modernization in Korea.
Drawing on largely untapped declassified materials from Korea and personal interviews with contemporaneous participants in the nascent defense industry, as well as declassified US documents and other external sources, Kwon weaves together oral histories and documentary evidence in an empirically rich narrative that details how militarization shaped the nation’s rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation. Cornerstone of the Nation makes the case that South Korea’s arms development under Park may be the most durable and yet least acknowledged factor behind the country’s rise to economic prominence in the late twentieth century.
BIO:
Peter Banseok Kwon is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. A historian with interdisciplinary training, Kwon examines the interplay of militarization, modernization, state-building, nationalism, and civil-military relations in Korea, East Asia, and in comparative global perspective. His work focuses especially on how states mobilize institutions, industry, and political authority in pursuit of security, development, and sovereign capacity. Kwon has served as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and Visiting Professor at Korea National Defense University, a Soon Young Kim Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and a Visiting Scholar at Yonsei University, Seoul National University, and the Academy of Korean Studies.
ADMISSION (Online & In-person): Free for RAS Korea Lifetime and Annual Members; W10,000 for Non-members; W5,000 for Non-member students (Student ID requested)
