The Korean Conference on Arts & Humanities

Join us in Korea (and online) for KCAH2024
October 28 – November 1, 2024 | Songdo ConvensiA, Incheon, Korea, & Online

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IAFOR is very excited to announce a new conference event in 2024. The Korean Conference on Arts & Humanities (KCAH) will be held in conjunction with the Korean Conference on Education. This conference will be hosted by Songdo International City in Incheon, on the outskirts of Seoul, in partnership with the University of Utah's Asia Campus, the Incheon Global Campus, and the IAFOR Research Centre at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, Japan.

Songdo is a remarkable new city celebrating its 21st anniversary in 2024, and the ambitious project will provide a wonderful venue to highlight the importance of both education and educational institutions, as well as the arts and humanities, at the center of a strong civil society, and alongside Songdo’s vaunted commitment to be an international city resonates deeply with IAFOR's commitment to the International, Intercultural, and Interdisciplinary.

South Korea is a country with a long and rich history, but also a difficult one; as a country that has been caught in the middle of regional power struggles for much of its existence, the cause for a large and influential Korean diaspora. A cultural center of great importance for millenia, the Korean Peninsula has been subject successively to colonization by the Japanese and then shortly after, an unwitting venue to a bitter civil war that was also a proxy for cold war rivalries. The Korean war split the country in two, with the South becoming a rightwing dictatorship, and North Korea becoming a hereditary communist dictatorship. In the 1970s, the South became a democracy and underwent a remarkable societal transition from one of the poorest nations on earth to one of the most successful. Via this incredible energy, driven by its history and perhaps its precarity, South Korea is now a multicultural and religiously pluralistic society. A resurgent Korea is now a global cultural powerhouse, known throughout the world for its dramas, film and music production, notably K-pop.

KCAH2024 encourages academics and scholars to meet and exchange ideas and views in a forum stimulating respectful dialogue. Like our long-running events elsewhere in the world, this event afford an exceptional opportunity for renewing old acquaintances, making new contacts, networking, and facilitating partnerships across national and disciplinary borders.

We look forward to welcoming scholars from across Asia and around the world for what is sure to be a great conference.

– The Conference Programme Committee
Ms Keiko Bang, Bang Singapore Pte Ltd., Singapore
Dr Joseph Haldane, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Dr Gregory C. Hill, University of Utah, Asia Campus, South Korea
Dr Melina Neophytou, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Dr Hugh Schuckman, University of Utah, Asia Campus, South Korea
Professor Ki-Sang Song, Korea National University of Education, South Korea

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About IAFOR

Founded in 2009, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) is a politically independent non-partisan and non-profit interdisciplinary think tank, conference organiser and publisher. Based in Japan, its main administrative office is in Nagoya, and its research center is in The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), a graduate school of Osaka University. IAFOR runs research programs and events in Asia, Europe and North America in partnership with universities and think tanks, and has also worked on a number of multi-sector cooperative programs and events, including collaborations with the United Nations and the Government of Japan.