Kim, Bumsoo
Position : IPUS Director / Professor, Dept. of Liberal Studies
Research interests : Political Theory, Democracy, Multiculturalism, Human Rights
Professor Bumsoo Kim received his B.A. and M.A. from the Department of International Relations at Seoul National University in 1992 and 1997 respectively, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2006. Since then, he has worked as a research professor in the BK Program of the Department of Political Science at Seoul National University and as a lecturer at Seoul National University, and since 2010, has been a professor in the College of Liberal Studies (CLS) at Seoul National University. In the College of Liberal Studies, he served as an associate dean twice (2012-2014 and 2017-2019), and since February 2023, has been serving as a Dean. At the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (IPUS), he served as a chief of External Relations Division, head of the Center for Unification Studies, and deputy director from 2016 to 2023, and since March 2023 has been serving as a director. He has also served as a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo and a visiting professor at the University of Washington, U.S.A. He has served as a vice president of the Korean Political Science Association, a research board member of the Korean Association of International Studies, a president of the Governance Research Association, and a consultant for university restructuring at the Ministry of Education. As of March 2023, he is a member of the Academic Council of Seoul National University and an advisory board member of the Overseas Koreans Foundation.
His main research interests include political theory such as theory of justice and freedom, human rights theory, peace theory, nationalism, and multiculturalism. He has published many books in Korean, including What Is Fairness in Korean Society: 7 Theories of Justice to Protect a Fair Me (Akanet, 2022); What Is Peace Studies: Genealogy and Issues (Seoul National University Press, 2022); Korea-Japan Relations: Beyond Conflict to Reconciliation (Parkmun Press, 2021). He has also published many articles in peer-reviewed journals, which include “Bringing Class Back In: The Changing Basis of Inequality and the Korean Minority in Japan,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(5), 2008, pp. 871-898; “Are North Korean Compatriots ‘Korean’? The Trifurcation of Ethnic Nationalism in South Korea during the Syngman Rhee Era (1948-1960),” Journal of Korean Studies, 24(1), 2019, pp. 149~171; “Are the Freedom of States and International Public Laws Compatible? Kant’s Theory of Peace and the Freedom of States” Korean Journal of International Relations, 59(3), 2019, pp. 7-54. In 2009, he received the Best Article Award of the Korean Political Science Association for his article “Who Is Japanese? the Boundaries of the ‘Japanese’ in Post-War Japan,” published in Journal of the Korean Political Science Association, 43(1), pp. 177-202.
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