Hyun Ok Park
Professor
Phone: (416) 736-2100 Ext: 77986
Email: hopark@yorku.ca
Hyun Ok Park is a Professor of Sociology at York University. Before joining York in 2007, she taught at the University of Michigan and New York University. With archival and ethnographic research, her research investigates global capitalism in colonial, industrial, and financial forms, democracy, socialism, and post-socialist transition, especially in terms of the experience of laborers, ethnic and diasporic minorities, and refugees. She engages with the critical theory of modernity and otherness, postcolonialism, and transnational and global history, to which she contributes with her anchored sociological inquiry of capitalism and social change.
She serves on the Associate Editors Board of Critical Sociology (Sage Publisher) and the Editorial Boards of Global Perspectives (University of California Press) and Economy and Society (Seoul, Korea).
She was the founding and former director of the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University and was the Project Director of “Korea in the World, the World in Korean Studies,” a collaborative project of Korean studies scholars at York, eastern Canada, and the US, which is funded by the Core University Program for Korean Studies grant (1.1M, 2018-2023) from the Academy of Korean Studies.
She was a Member of the School of Historical Studies (Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth fellow, 2005-2006) and a Visitor in the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). Her research has been also supported by other fellowships, including the John. D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, and Academy of Korean Studies' senior research grant. She also served the Board of Trustees of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS).
PUBLISHED BOOKS:
1. Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria (Duke University Press, 2005). This book presents Korean migration as a transnational mechanism of Japanese empire-building. Koreans’ border-crossing migration, their rice farming and land ownership, and their nationality were contested terrains for the bedfellow-like relationship of Japanese and Chinese powers in the capitalist transformation from a ground-rent to a credit system in Manchuria.
2. The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea (Columbia University Press, 2015; The 2017 James Palais Book Award of the Association for Asian Studies, Honorable Mention). This book argues that Korea is already unified in a transnational form by capital. Rather than long-awaited territorial and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. The chiasmus in this book is not so much between ethnic national sovereignty and nation-state formation as between modern sovereignty and global capitalism.
3. Chabon ŭi muŭisik (Korean translation of The Capitalist Unconscious). (Seoul: Chonnyonuisangsang Press, 2023) (650 pages) (Sejong Book Award)
PUBLISHED ARTICLES:
Book review of Andre Schmid's North Korea’s Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press). Journal of Korean Studies 31 (2) (2026): 518–524.
“On Politics after the 12.3 Insurrection in South Korea.” Positions Politics (2024).
“Reading Burawoy’s The Politics of Production Now: On the Political after Post-Politics.” Critical Sociology 50 (6) (2024): 931 –942.
“Marxism and the Left-Right Division in South Korea.” Class, Race and Corporate Power 12 (1) (2024).
“The Politics of Time: The Sewŏl Ferry Disaster and the Disaster of Democracy.” Journal of Asian Studies (2022).
“The Candlelight Revolution in South Korea," in David Snow, Donatella della Porta, and Doug McAdam (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social & Political Movements.
BOOK IN PROGRESS:
"A Sublime Disaster: Crisis, Capital, and Democracy in Post-Sewol Korea."
This manuscript critiques the statist-juridical form of democratization and the cultural turn of the emancipatory politics in South Korea since the 1990s. It discusses fascism and its anti-thesis not just in the political (party politics, mass protests, and regime change) but also in the social (singularity, non-identity, and the sociability of fun and festival).
TWO PROJECTS IN PROGRESS:
First, I have begun a new oral history project on Korean Chinese women in northeast China, to bring gender into my study of the experience of transnational migration and Cold War memories.
Second, I have returned to a study of the North Korean community in Japan, tentatively entitled “‘In the Name of History’: Stateless Koreans in Japan,” for which I conducted archival research and interviews years ago. The politics of Koreans in Japan is conventionally studied as a local Cold War history: their divided identification with two Koreas, their stateless status in Japan, and their struggle for social and civil rights. My study turns this local history into a global and transnational history of the Cold War. Their small business and ethnic education movement enabled their participation in their homelands’ Cold War. They are now linked with a new global capitalist network, hiring migrant workers from South Korea, China, and other Asia-Pacific regions. Their latest claim for the right not to have rights is investigated in these old and new contexts along with the analysis of their memory of colonial experience as migrant and day laborers.
Degrees
Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of California at BerkeleyResearch Interests
- The John O’Neil Awards for Teaching Excellence hosted by the Sociology Undergraduate Student Association, York University. - 2009
- Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Interdisciplinary Studies, Visitor - 2007-2006
- Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, School of Historical Studies, Member - 2006-2005
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant - 2002-2001
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship - 2002-2001
- Book award: Honorable mention (Association for Asian Studies) for The Capitalist Unconscious - 2015-2016
- Book award: Sejong Book Award for the Korean translation of The Capitalist Unconscious (Chabon ui muuisik) - 2023
- The AKS Core University for Korean Studies Grant (project director) - 2018-2013
The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005 xix, 314 pp.
“We Are All Migrant Laborers”: Democracy and Universal Politics,” in Tina Mai Chen and David S. Churchill (eds.), The Material of World History. New York: Routledge Press, pp 189-204.
"For the Rights of Colonial Returnees: Korean Chinese, Decolonization, Neoliberal Democracy in South Korea” in Jesook Song (ed.), Millennial South Korea: Neoliberalism, Routledge Press.
"The Politics of Korean Unification and Neoliberal Democracy,” in Sonia Ryang (ed.), North Korea: Towards a Better Understanding. Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield Press, 31 pp.
“Democracy as the Transcendence of History: Decolonization, Violence of the Past, and the Korean Chinese in South Korea,” in Dong-Hoon Seol and Jungmin Seo (eds.), The Korean Nation and Its “Others” in the Age of Globalization and Democratization. The Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
“Desires for North Korea,” in Andrew Ross and Kristin Ross (eds.), Anti-Americanism, New York University Press, pp. 221-234.
“Enlightenment and Nationalism,” “Anti-Communism and Nationalism,” “Korean Nationalism,” “Park Chung Hee’s Nationalism,” “Kim Il Sung’s Nationalism.” Encyclopedia of Nationalism, edited by Alexander J. Motyl. San Diego: Harcourt Academic Press.
"Ideals of Liberation," in Elain Kim and Chungmoo Choi (eds.), Dangerous Women: Korean Nationalism and Women. New York, Routledge Press, pp.229-248.
Namhee Lee, The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). Contemporary Sociology.
Nancy Abelmann, Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). American Journal of Sociology. Volume 104 (1): 1092-1093.
Gi-Wook Shin, Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1996). Contemporary Sociology 27 (4): 410-411.
Problems of Comparability/Possibilities for Comparative Studies. Issue of Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, co-edited with Harry Harootunian. Volume 32, Number 2, Summer 2005. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 258 pp
"Repetition, Comparability, and Indeterminable Nation: Korean Migrants in the 1920s and 1990s,” in Harry Harootunian and Hyun Ok Park (eds.), Problems of Comparability/Possibilities for Comparative Studies. Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture 32 (2): 227-251.
"Anti-Americanism and Realignment in the Two Koreas.” Radical Philosophy 119 (May/June), pp. 2-5.
"Korean Manchuria: The Racial Politics of the Territorial Osmosis.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 99: 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 193-215.
Forthcoming (2022)
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/SOCI3430 6.0 | A | Ethnicity, Power and Identity | LECT |
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2027 | AP/SOCI4360 6.0 | M | Migration Experiences: Theory & Practice | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/SOCI3430 6.0 | A | Ethnicity, Power and Identity | LECT |
Hyun Ok Park is a Professor of Sociology at York University. Before joining York in 2007, she taught at the University of Michigan and New York University. With archival and ethnographic research, her research investigates global capitalism in colonial, industrial, and financial forms, democracy, socialism, and post-socialist transition, especially in terms of the experience of laborers, ethnic and diasporic minorities, and refugees. She engages with the critical theory of modernity and otherness, postcolonialism, and transnational and global history, to which she contributes with her anchored sociological inquiry of capitalism and social change.
She serves on the Associate Editors Board of Critical Sociology (Sage Publisher) and the Editorial Boards of Global Perspectives (University of California Press) and Economy and Society (Seoul, Korea).
She was the founding and former director of the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University and was the Project Director of “Korea in the World, the World in Korean Studies,” a collaborative project of Korean studies scholars at York, eastern Canada, and the US, which is funded by the Core University Program for Korean Studies grant (1.1M, 2018-2023) from the Academy of Korean Studies.
She was a Member of the School of Historical Studies (Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth fellow, 2005-2006) and a Visitor in the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). Her research has been also supported by other fellowships, including the John. D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, and Academy of Korean Studies' senior research grant. She also served the Board of Trustees of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS).
PUBLISHED BOOKS:
1. Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria (Duke University Press, 2005). This book presents Korean migration as a transnational mechanism of Japanese empire-building. Koreans’ border-crossing migration, their rice farming and land ownership, and their nationality were contested terrains for the bedfellow-like relationship of Japanese and Chinese powers in the capitalist transformation from a ground-rent to a credit system in Manchuria.
2. The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea (Columbia University Press, 2015; The 2017 James Palais Book Award of the Association for Asian Studies, Honorable Mention). This book argues that Korea is already unified in a transnational form by capital. Rather than long-awaited territorial and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. The chiasmus in this book is not so much between ethnic national sovereignty and nation-state formation as between modern sovereignty and global capitalism.
3. Chabon ŭi muŭisik (Korean translation of The Capitalist Unconscious). (Seoul: Chonnyonuisangsang Press, 2023) (650 pages) (Sejong Book Award)
PUBLISHED ARTICLES:
Book review of Andre Schmid's North Korea’s Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press). Journal of Korean Studies 31 (2) (2026): 518–524.
“On Politics after the 12.3 Insurrection in South Korea.” Positions Politics (2024).
“Reading Burawoy’s The Politics of Production Now: On the Political after Post-Politics.” Critical Sociology 50 (6) (2024): 931 –942.
“Marxism and the Left-Right Division in South Korea.” Class, Race and Corporate Power 12 (1) (2024).
“The Politics of Time: The Sewŏl Ferry Disaster and the Disaster of Democracy.” Journal of Asian Studies (2022).
“The Candlelight Revolution in South Korea," in David Snow, Donatella della Porta, and Doug McAdam (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social & Political Movements.
BOOK IN PROGRESS:
"A Sublime Disaster: Crisis, Capital, and Democracy in Post-Sewol Korea."
This manuscript critiques the statist-juridical form of democratization and the cultural turn of the emancipatory politics in South Korea since the 1990s. It discusses fascism and its anti-thesis not just in the political (party politics, mass protests, and regime change) but also in the social (singularity, non-identity, and the sociability of fun and festival).
TWO PROJECTS IN PROGRESS:
First, I have begun a new oral history project on Korean Chinese women in northeast China, to bring gender into my study of the experience of transnational migration and Cold War memories.
Second, I have returned to a study of the North Korean community in Japan, tentatively entitled “‘In the Name of History’: Stateless Koreans in Japan,” for which I conducted archival research and interviews years ago. The politics of Koreans in Japan is conventionally studied as a local Cold War history: their divided identification with two Koreas, their stateless status in Japan, and their struggle for social and civil rights. My study turns this local history into a global and transnational history of the Cold War. Their small business and ethnic education movement enabled their participation in their homelands’ Cold War. They are now linked with a new global capitalist network, hiring migrant workers from South Korea, China, and other Asia-Pacific regions. Their latest claim for the right not to have rights is investigated in these old and new contexts along with the analysis of their memory of colonial experience as migrant and day laborers.
Degrees
Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of California at BerkeleyResearch Interests
Awards
- The John O’Neil Awards for Teaching Excellence hosted by the Sociology Undergraduate Student Association, York University. - 2009
- Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Interdisciplinary Studies, Visitor - 2007-2006
- Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, School of Historical Studies, Member - 2006-2005
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant - 2002-2001
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship - 2002-2001
- Book award: Honorable mention (Association for Asian Studies) for The Capitalist Unconscious - 2015-2016
- Book award: Sejong Book Award for the Korean translation of The Capitalist Unconscious (Chabon ui muuisik) - 2023
- The AKS Core University for Korean Studies Grant (project director) - 2018-2013
All Publications
“We Are All Migrant Laborers”: Democracy and Universal Politics,” in Tina Mai Chen and David S. Churchill (eds.), The Material of World History. New York: Routledge Press, pp 189-204.
"For the Rights of Colonial Returnees: Korean Chinese, Decolonization, Neoliberal Democracy in South Korea” in Jesook Song (ed.), Millennial South Korea: Neoliberalism, Routledge Press.
"The Politics of Korean Unification and Neoliberal Democracy,” in Sonia Ryang (ed.), North Korea: Towards a Better Understanding. Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield Press, 31 pp.
“Democracy as the Transcendence of History: Decolonization, Violence of the Past, and the Korean Chinese in South Korea,” in Dong-Hoon Seol and Jungmin Seo (eds.), The Korean Nation and Its “Others” in the Age of Globalization and Democratization. The Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
“Desires for North Korea,” in Andrew Ross and Kristin Ross (eds.), Anti-Americanism, New York University Press, pp. 221-234.
“Enlightenment and Nationalism,” “Anti-Communism and Nationalism,” “Korean Nationalism,” “Park Chung Hee’s Nationalism,” “Kim Il Sung’s Nationalism.” Encyclopedia of Nationalism, edited by Alexander J. Motyl. San Diego: Harcourt Academic Press.
"Ideals of Liberation," in Elain Kim and Chungmoo Choi (eds.), Dangerous Women: Korean Nationalism and Women. New York, Routledge Press, pp.229-248.
Namhee Lee, The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). Contemporary Sociology.
Nancy Abelmann, Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). American Journal of Sociology. Volume 104 (1): 1092-1093.
Gi-Wook Shin, Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1996). Contemporary Sociology 27 (4): 410-411.
The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005 xix, 314 pp.
Problems of Comparability/Possibilities for Comparative Studies. Issue of Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, co-edited with Harry Harootunian. Volume 32, Number 2, Summer 2005. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 258 pp
"Repetition, Comparability, and Indeterminable Nation: Korean Migrants in the 1920s and 1990s,” in Harry Harootunian and Hyun Ok Park (eds.), Problems of Comparability/Possibilities for Comparative Studies. Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture 32 (2): 227-251.
"Anti-Americanism and Realignment in the Two Koreas.” Radical Philosophy 119 (May/June), pp. 2-5.
"Korean Manchuria: The Racial Politics of the Territorial Osmosis.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 99: 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 193-215.
Forthcoming (2022)
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/SOCI3430 6.0 | A | Ethnicity, Power and Identity | LECT |
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2027 | AP/SOCI4360 6.0 | M | Migration Experiences: Theory & Practice | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/SOCI3430 6.0 | A | Ethnicity, Power and Identity | LECT |
