2021 Sejong Writing Competition
Judges
Sijo Judges:
Gyung-ryul Jang |
Seong-Kon Kim |
Mark Peterson
Essay Judges:
David Schaafsma |
Caroline Kim |
Joanne Rhim
Gyung-ryul Jang received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Seoul National University, Korea, and his Ph.D. degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Jang is now professor of English at Seoul National University. He has contributed numerous articles on contemporary literary theory and Korean literature to various literary journals in Korea. He has recently published two books of critical essays in sijo poetry: Poetics of Temporality: Toward a New Understanding of Sijo Poetry (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2013); and What Does Change and What Should Not Change: Critical Essays in Sijo Poetry (Seoul: Literary Notebook Pub. Co., 2017). Some other recent publications are as follows: Joy of Reading Poetry: A Critical Reading of Contemporary Korean Poetry (Seoul: Literary Notebook Pub. Co., 2014); What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen: Essays in Korean Literature (Seoul: Moonji Pub. Co., 2016); Somewhere Between Insight and Blindness: Critical Essays in Contemporary Korean Literary Trend (Seoul: Munhakdongne Pub. Group, 2017); and Is it a Petal or a Butterfly?: Essays in Korean Sijo and Japanese Haiku and Tanka (Seoul: Lyric Poetry & Poetics Pub. Co., 2017).
Seong-Kon Kim is a Professor Emeritus of Seoul National University. From 2012 to 2017, Kim was President of the Literary Translation Institute of Korea (a ministerial appointment with the Government of the Republic of Korea).
On May 19, 2017, Kim received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York "in recognition of the profound impact Professor Kim has had as a cultural and literary bridge between Korea and the United States.” In 2018, Kim taught at George Washington University as Dean's Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities and at the University of Málaga in Spain as a Visiting Professor. In the same year, Felipe VI, King of Spain, decorated Kim with La Orden del Merito Civil (The Order of Chivalry). In 2019, Kim taught at the University of California, Irvine as a Visiting Professor. Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College.
Professor Kim received his Ph.D. in English from SUNY/Buffalo under Professor Leslie A. Fiedler and studied comparative literature at Columbia University under Professor Edward W. Said. Professor Kim has received, among others, the SUNY/Buffalo Internationally Distinguished Alumni Award, CU Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the Fulbright Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Kim was editor of literary journals such as Literature & Thought, 21st Century Literature, Contemporary World Literature and Korea Journal. In addition, Kim has been a regularly featured columnist for the Korea Herald since 2003. Previously, Professor Kim has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Pennsylvania State University, and Brigham Young University and conducted research at Harvard-Yenching Institute and Oxford University. Currently, Kim is a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College.
Mark Peterson (Professor Emeritus of Korean history, literature and language, Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT) received B.A.'s in Asian Studies and Anthropology from Brigham Young University in 1971. He received his M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1987, both from Harvard University in the field of East Asian Languages and Civilization. Prior to coming to BYU in 1984 he was the director of the Fulbright program in Korea from 1978 to 1983. He has been the coordinator of the Asian Studies Program and was the director of the undergraduate programs in the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies. Dr. Peterson is a member of the Association for Asian Studies, where he was formerly the chair of the Korean Studies Committee; was also the book review editor for the Journal of Asian Studies for Korean Studies books. He is also a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, the International Association for Korean Language Education, the International Korean Literature Association, and the American Association of Korean Teachers. He served as past editor-in-chief for the Korea Journal, published by UNESCO in Korea, from 2015 to 2017. Currently he is working with a research center he founded called The Frog Outside the Well Research Center, which publishes an active YouTube channel by that name. He also writes a weekly column for the Korea Times.
David Schaafsma, Professor of English and Director of the Program in English Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is interested in scholarly issues concerning the preparation of English teachers, young adult literature, community-based literacy, the uses of narrative in research and learning, and the relationship between literacy, democracy, and social action. His books include Narrative Inquiry in English Education (Teachers College Press); Jane Addams in the Classroom (The University of Illinois Press), and Eating on the Street: Teaching Literacy in a Multicultural Society (The University of Pittsburgh Press)
Caroline Kim is the author of a collection of short stories about the Korean diaspora, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, which won the 2020 Drue Heinz Prize in Literature and was long listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collections and The Story Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Bare Life Review, Carve, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, The Santa Monica Review, Porter House Review, and elsewhere. Find her at carolinekim.net and @carolinewriting.
Joanne Rhim Lee teaches Asian History at Century College in St. Paul, Minnesota and has written for the Korean Quarterly for the past twenty years. She is originally from Chicago, and graduated from Carleton College and Stanford University.