Committee on Korean Studies

Important Changes and Initiatives in 2025

Dear Members of the Committee on Korean Studies,

We are writing with a number of important updates regarding the Committee on Korean Studies. In March 2025, after the annual meeting, the CKS sent out a poll to its community. The poll provided guidance to the Committee regarding how best to serve the Korean Studies community.

The following changes will be implemented in the next year:

Details will be explained below.

Membership Dues and Election Eligibility

The group voted, with a majority, that the “voting members of the Committee on Korean Studies” will be “individuals who have paid membership dues to the Committee on Korean Studies.” For the 2026 onward, CKS will collect membership dues of $20 every two years ($10 every year) in advance of biannual CKS election. Voting eligibility for CKS Executive Committee members will be determined by whether the dues had been paid for the last two years.

Since CKS is a “Sponsored Group” of the Association of Asian Studies, all fiscal transactions must be administered through AAS. To make a membership due payment, CKS members must also be active AAS members. To pay dues, you will need to:

  1. Login to http://members.asianstudies.org
  2. Select “Donate”->”Make Sponsored Group Payments/Donations” (https://members.asianstudies.org/sponsored-group-payments-donations) and select “Committee on Korean Studies (CKS).” If you see an error message that states “no donations are possible at this time,” it means you have not logged into your AAS account
  3. Check “Yes! I would like to donate to the Committee on Korean Studies” and fill out your payment details.

Currently, nearly all of CKS’s funding comes from AAS’s Northeast Asia Council and the generosity of the Korea Foundation. This modest budget allows CKS to host a lunch during its annual members meeting for the Korean Studies field and provide modest support for CKS’s other functions. However, this amount of support (usually $3000-4000) is not enough for CKS to serve the field in any other capacity. Membership dues will allow the CKS to cover its basic functionality (website, meeting costs etc.) and potentially expand its academic activities in the near future, including CKS-sponsored events before the AAS.

Interdisciplinary CKS Academic Event

This year, CKS will be hosting the first Committee on Korean Studies AAS pre-conference event. This year, it will be held at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus in Vancouver and will be organized by Professor Dalyong Jin. There will be an intimate Korean Studies gathering on Wednesday, March 11 2026. The topic of this year’s meeting is “Nostalgia or Renaissance of Popular Culture in the 1990s.” For more information and the CFP visit https://koreanstudies.org/2025/09/08/2026-aas-pre-conference-meeting/.

Fundraising for New Book Prize

The Committee for Korean Studies (CKS) has advised the leadership of the Association of Asian Studies and the Northeast Asia Council to consider creating a second Korean studies book prize in addition to the James B. Palais Book Prize. Currently, AAS supports 14 different area-specific prizes: five for China, three for South Asia, and three for Southeast Asia, but only two for northeast Asia (one Japan, one Korea). CKS notes that the James Palais Prize has historically served the field very well, but at this point a single Korean Studies prize is unable to accommodate both the growing size and the interdisciplinary diversification of Korean Studies as an Area Studies field. Over the past two decades, Korean Studies has grown beyond its traditional orientation in history and literature. New generations of scholars have also made pioneering forays in the social sciences, film, music, and media studies, and contemporary cultural studies. This growth is reflected in the enormous volume of new publications in these fields, which currently represents most of the increase in tenure-track positions in Korean Studies.

We propose that a new book prize be created to accommodate the field’s growth. The Palais Prize could be reserved for history and literature (and adjacent humanities disciplines), while the new prize could accommodate social sciences, communications, contemporary culture studies, and media. As with most Book Prize nominations, presses are allowed to choose to nominate a book for one of the two prizes, not both.

In the community vote undertaken after the March 2025 AAS, there was a fairly even split among the three proposed options among the 68 ballots cast: 1) prize focused on contemporary studies (36.8%), 2) prize focused on social science and media studies (33.8%), and 3) transnational/transregional Korean studies (25%). The exact parameters of the prize will need to be deferred to future discussion.

In order to fund and endow the prize in perpetuity (as the James Palais Prize), we would need to raise $50,000. CKS would likely work closely with NEAC and AAS to make this possible. At the moment, CKS would like to raise $15,000 among its own membership to demonstrate to institutional funders the commitment of the Korean Studies field in North America to this goal.

For now, AAS members should send donations for the future Book Prize the same way as they would the membership dues (see below). However, they should also send an e-mail to CKS Chair Sixiang Wang six@ucla.edu with the precise dollar amount and an indication that the funds are intended for the future Book Prize. We will explore other options for collecting crowdsourced funds for the future Book Prize.

  1. Login to http://members.asianstudies.org
  2. Select “Donate”->”Make Sponsored Group Payments/Donations” (https://members.asianstudies.org/sponsored-group-payments-donations) and select “Committee on Korean Studies (CKS).” If you see an error message that states “no donations are possible at this time,” it means you have not logged into your AAS account
  3. Check “Yes! I would like to donate to the Committee on Korean Studies” and fill out your payment details.

Graduate Student Representation

The group also overwhelmingly supported Graduate Student Representation on the CKS (78.3%, with 69 cast). A large majority suggested involving graduate student officers in addition to the regular committee members (76.1%). At this juncture, the CKS will initially solicit graduate student nominations for one positions to serve with the CKS Executive Committee for a two-year term. In addition to participating in CKS Executive Committee meetings as an ex officio observer member, the Graduate Student representative would also help with membership tracking. We will follow up on this in the near future.

Changes to the By-Laws

Finally, CKS has revised its bylaws:

Section 2: The voting members of the Committee on Korean Studies are all individuals who have paid current membership dues to the Committee on Korean Studies. The voting members of the Committee on Korean Studies are all persons who are members of the Association of Asian Studies and who are interested in Korean studies

Section 3: The Executive Committee consists of five members elected by the voting members of the Committee on Korean Studies. Elections will be held in even years for one four-year terms, effective after the conclusion of the annual General Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies The Executive Committee consists of five members elected by the voting members of the Committee on Korean Studies for a three-year staggered period so that two new members shall be chosen each year and one new member every third year.  The number of Executive Committee members elected in any given year may be adjusted to account for resignations in the interim as well as for factors listed below. In the event that the Chair of the Executive Committee is selected with fewer than two years remaining on her or his Executive Committee term of service, his or her Executive Committee term of service shall be extended so as to encompass the full term of her or his Chairship.

Please see updated By Laws: https://koreanstudies.org/cks-revised-bylaws-draft/

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