An international conference hosted by the UCLA Center for Korean Studies

This conference examines cultural exchanges between Chosŏn Korea and East Asia from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It will revisit various moments in which the border-crossing travels of Koreans to Qing China and Tokugawa Japan sparked new forms of human relations, political ideas, and textual practices. Encounters across state borders often meant violent confrontations involving armed forces, and the Imjin War (1592–1598) produced long-lasting memories of traumatic experiences in Chosŏn. In the new international order that emerged after the wars, however, the royal court of Chosŏn maintained formal diplomatic relations with Qing China and Tokugawa Japan. The regular and irregular diplomatic visits of Chosŏn envoys and literati to China and Japan were themselves the sources of extensive travel writings as literary works, and the stimuli for creative cultural productions on both sides of these borders.

This conference brings together scholars from East Asia and North America to explore the impacts of cultural encounters across East Asia in the three centuries following the Imjin War. It also aims to foster critical conversations on methodological issues in the study of the literature and culture of Chosŏn Korea in the context of East Asia with a renewed sense of relevance to the contemporary crisis in the world order.

October 24, 2025
UCLA Luskin Conference Center
Exploration Room (2nd Floor)
8:30 AM–5:30 PM
See Map

October 25, 2025
UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Royce Hall 243
9:00 AM–1 PM
See Map

Attendance by invitation or reservation only.
Please RSVP by October 19