Author and Presenter:

Yong chool Ha is Korea Foundation professor at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington and received his Ph D at University of California, Berkeley. Before he moved to University of Washington in January 2008, professor Ha taught at the Department of International Relations, Seoul National University where he served as chairman of the department, associate dean of the College of Social Sciences and chairman of the Unification Forum. He also served president of Korean Association of International Studies. He has written and published extensively on Korean domestic and international relations, North Korean politics and Soviet and Russian politics in English, Russian and Korean journals, such as Comparative Political Studies, Asian Survey, and Cambridge Review of International Relations. He led the trans-Siberian railroad research trip for the first time in Korea in 2000. He also visited Pyongyang, Kagesong and Keumgan Mountain in recent years and met with a number of North Korean "Saeteomin"( defectors) people. Recently he initiated an international consortium for Northeast Asian community building with a particular focus on linking Siberia and the Far East to Northeast Asian economies. His research interests are community building and international relations theories, late industrialization and IR. Changing elite-mass relations in late industrializing countries. Recently he published a book title, "Late Industrialization, Tradition and Social Change in South Korea(UW Press, 2024). His other recent publications include: The Dynamics of Strong State (SNU Press, 2006), Late Industrialization, the State and Tradition: the Emergence of Neofamilism in Korea(2007, CPS), Colonial Social Change (ed.)(U. of Washington Press, 2013), and The International Impact of the Colonial Rule in Korea (UW Press, 2019)

Meetings and Agendas:

Meeting 1 

Chapters 1–3: The Sociology of Late Industrialization; The Colonial Origins of Neofamilism; The State and Tradition: The Emergence of Neofamilism

Questions: 

• Does industrialization bring about similar social consequences?
• Why is Western sociological frameworks are limited in understanding the societies of late industrialization cases, such as Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and the Soviet Union?
• Why and how do traditional institutions and values matter in understanding the social consequences of late industrialization? 
• How did the neofamilism emerge in South Korea?

Meeting 2 

Chapter 4: The Hollowing Out of Bureaucracy: Institutional Consequences of late industrialization: the case of bureaucracy

Question: 

• Does industrialization necessarily bring about bureaucratization?

Meeting 3 

Chapters 5–6: Civil Society and Democratization; Daily Practice of Neofamilism

 Questions:

• Is civil society universal?
• How have neofamilism in South Korea affecting the dynamics of democratization?
• What is the distinctiveness of state-society relations in late industrializing societies?

Meeting 4  

Chapter 7: The 1997 Financial Crisis and Neofamilism

Questions:

• Has neofamilism survived the financial crisis?
• What lessons about history can we learn from the book?