Hee-sun Kim

About the Lecturer
Name : Dr. Hee-sun Kim
Hee-sun Kim is a professor of ethnomusicology at Kookmin
University and executive director of the World Music Cultural
Foundation. She received a BA and MA in Korean music from
Seoul National University and a Ph.D in Ethnomusicology from
the University of Pittsburgh. She formerly served as a research
fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore in its
cultural studies cluster, and as a research fellow at the Asian Music Institute of Seoul
National University.
Professor Kim has been working on modernization process of Korean music, Korean
music and nationalism, globalization, identity, and gender. Kim has published the book,
Contemporary Kayagŭm Music in Korea: Tradition, Modernity and Identity, and has
contributed chapters to many widely-circulated publications, including Music of Korea,
Sanjo, and Gugak Performance Program Guide, together with numerous academic papers
on world music, Korean and Asian music, and culture. She has also published numerous
translations of books on Korean traditional music, including Pansori, Gagok, Korean
Haegeum: A Practical Guide, Understanding Korean Art, and Contemporary Gayageum
Notations
for
Composers.
Her
recent
writings
have
been
published
in
internationally-refereed journals, including Asian Musicology (“Between Global and Local:
Twenty-First
Century
Korean
Music-Making,”
2012)
and
The
World
of
Music
(“Performing History and Imagining the Past: Re-Contextualization of Court Ensembles
in Contemporary South Korea,” 2012), as well as several Korean journals. Her research
interest concerns the modernization process in Korean, world, and contemporary Asian
music.
She
is
currently
conducting
research
on
the
“Cultural
Translation
of
Contemporary Asian Music,” with the support of the National Research Foundation of
Korea.
Dr.
Kim
serves
as
an
editor
of
Journal
of
The
Society
for
Korean
Historico-Musicology and member of committee in several academic societies in national
and international societies, and as program committee member of the International
Council for Traditional Music. She had also served as an examiner of the Arts Council
Korea, Korea Arts Management Service and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and
Tourism.
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