Dr Deokhyo Choi

I am an ethnic Korean-born in Japan (third-generation zainichi Korean) and specialize in the history of modern Korea and Japan.

Before joining the University of Sheffield in July 2018, I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge (2013-2016) and the Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea University (2017-2018). I also taught at Underwood International College, Yonsei University, from 2016 to 2018.

Throughout my journey in academia, I have been very fortunate to directly witness crucial historic events on the Korean peninsula and within Japan-Korea relations.

As a college exchange student at Yonsei University in 1997-1998, I watched the unfolding of one of the most dramatic political events in post-liberation Korean history, as Kim Dae-Jung, a long-time democratic fighter and survivor of state terrorism, was elected President in the middle of South Korea’s unprecedented economic crisis.

In 2000, a sense of hope and buoyancy borne out of the first North-South Korean summit meeting could be felt everywhere among zainichi Korean communities, and this inspired me to write about how Korea was divided for my MA thesis.

In 2002, I was deeply puzzled to see unexpected social repercussions in Japan in the wake of the Prime Minister’s first visit to Pyongyang and started to consider how my historical research could engage with contemporary issues in Korea-Japan relations.

After a decade of sojourn in the US and the UK, I returned to East Asia and lived in Seoul from 2016 to 2018. I could again witness (and become part of) iconic moments of hope and history making in South Korea, where the series of citizens’ massive street protests in the piercing cold of the winter led to the “Candlelight Revolution” and the ousting of the corrupt President.

I could also learn firsthand what everyday life in the “post-Cold War powder keg” looked like while observing the political landscape of the Korean peninsula rapidly transforming from the nuclear (war) crisis to the North-South rapprochement and a remarkable détente between Washington and Pyongyang in June 2018.

My firsthand experience of these events profoundly nurtured my sense of the dynamics of historical change