Department of Political and Social Change Seminar Series
The global spread of popular culture creates opportunities to enhance a country’s soft power and build international ties through social contact. Without dismissing these benefits, we conceptualize three frames that may lead some people to instead view foreign pop culture as threatening, drawing from original surveys conducted in Japan and the United States regarding the K-Wave phenomenon.
Speakers
Dr. Jiyoung Ko is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University. Her research interests include nationalism, nuclear deterrence, alliance politics, and public opinion. She is the author of Popular Nationalism and War (Oxford University Press, 2023). She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center (2017–2018), a U.S.–Korea NextGen Scholar (2018–2019), and a Visiting Scholar at the Belfer Center at Harvard University (2024–2025). She is currently a Nuclear Security Fellow at Yale University. Her work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Journal of Peace Research.
Dr. Jonathan A. Chu is an Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. His research examines how humanitarian and liberal democratic institutions, norms and identity, and political opinion shape international affairs, particularly in relation to war and conflict. His work has appeared in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Politics, and Journal of Conflict Resolution, among other journals. His book, Social Cues: How the Liberal Community Legitimizes Humanitarian Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2025), develops and tests a novel theory explaining how international organisations such as NATO legitimise foreign policy.
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