Dr. Eugene Y. Park

Teaches at The Korea Society

Professor Eugene Y. Park specializes in the sociopolitical history of Korea, especially from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. He is currently working on his third monograph, Fallen Royals: The Kaesŏng Wang in Chosŏn Korea, 1392–1910 (title tentative), which examines positions occupied by the descendants of Koryŏ dynasty in Chosŏn politics and society. Besides analyzing the 1394 massacre of hundreds, if not thousands, of former royals by the Chosŏn government from various angles, Park traces the plight of survivors and their descendants as they assumed roles as state-appointed ritual heirs of the Koryŏ royal house, scholar-officials, local aristocrats, physicians, soldiers, and merchants. More than just a study of dynastic change in late medieval Eurasia and its repercussion in the early modern era, this book will also narrate a story of human interest.

In more general terms, much of Park’s research concerns the continuities and breaks of Korea’s experience across the conventionally recognized divide of the Open Port period. He is especially interested in the institutions that organized and gave meaning to early modern society and how they changed during the encounter with Western imperialism.