After the War: Land and Property Claims in Unification

Perspective on South Korea-United States Relations Since the Korean War — Part 1

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Join us and Professor Katharine H. S. Moon of Wellesley College for the first of a two-part webinar series commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

Monday, October 19, 2020
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Since the division and the Korean War, "unification" has become a mythic mantra, whose meaning, form, and process are up for contestation. Among one of the most fundamental challenges is the adjudication of real property (land) rights and the allocation of land for private and public use, but these issues are under-researched. The working assumption is that North Korean society would be reconstructed along South Korea’s market system and incorporated into global capitalism. The ROK government and private actors have begun weighing the pros and cons of different options regarding land ownership and access. Influenced by the negative aspects of German unification, they seek to avoid social and economic conflict stemming from competition and conflicting claims over real property and conclude that “symbolic compensation” for land that had been illegally confiscated or nationalized by the communist authorities in the North will be the best policy.

Moon argues for a broader understanding of property as it relates to political legitimacy, Korean cultural traditions and legal precedents, as well as transitional justice and international norms. She also investigates land adjudication in non-German cases, such as Cyprus, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, and South Africa to see how comparative analysis helps us understand historical-cultural sensitivities about land and private property as well as the best and worst practices in policy making. 

If you are interested in attending this webinar, please click here to register. 

Professor Katharine H. S. Moon
Edith Stix Wasserman
Professor of Asian Studies; Professor of Political Science,
Wellesley College

Professor Moon was the inaugural holder of the Korea Studies chair at The Brookings Institution. She is a member of the National Committee on North Korea Advisory Committee and an affiliated faculty at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. She is the author of Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations and Protesting America: Democracy and the U.S.-Korea Alliance.

koreanstudies@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Los Angeles