Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS)Waseda University

Name

PARK, Eun-A

Degree

Ph.D. in Political Science

Status

Assistant Professor

Research Topic

Memory Infrastructures and Transnational Advocacy in East Asia

This project investigates how human rights NGOs, museums, and advocacy groups in South Korea and Japan construct and institutionalize memory in relation to North Korea, and how these processes shape the prospects for peace and reconciliation in East Asia. While much scholarship has examined North Korean human rights through the lens of international law, humanitarianism, or geopolitics, less attention has been paid to what I call “memory infrastructures”- victims’ testimonies, museums, archives, transnational advocacy campaigns that give shape and legitimacy to justice claims. By developing a theory of memory infrastructures, this project aims to answer three core questions:
1) How do North Korean defectors’ NGOs and Japanese abductee NGOs frame testimonies and mobilize narratives of justice?
2) How do museums institutionalize memory, and with what consequences for narrative legitimacy and reconciliation?
3) How do these local/regional actors interact with transnational advocacy networks (TANs), and what does this reveal about the asymmetries and opportunities of global governance in East Asia?
By addressing these questions, the research reframes human rights activism not only as a matter of legal norms or humanitarian relief, but as a deeply historical and political struggle over memory, victimhood, and legitimacy.

Education and Academic Employment

Education

Academic Employment

Fields of Research Interests

Comparative Politics of Citizenship, Coethnic/Diaspora migration, Transnational advocacy, Memory Politics, East Asian Politics and Society, Qualitative and Multi Methods

Academic Publications

• Park, E.A., “Randomized Priming Interviews (RPI): Integrating Qualitative Interviews with Experimental Logic”, Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, 2024

• Lee, A., Park, E.A.., & Jo, H, “Social Comparison Concerns and Competitive Attitudes of North Korean Refugees and South Koreans: Measurement Invariance and Latent Mean Differences”, Japanese Psychological Research, 2023

• Myeong, A., Lee, A., Park, E.A.., Gong, Y.E., Kim, M.,& Jo, H., “Psychosocial-Adjustment Needs of North Korean Refugee Youth from the Perspectives of Alternative-School Members”, Journal of Refugee Studies, 2020

• Park, E.A. “A Study on the Governmentality of Making North Korean Migrants into Neoliberal Subjects: Focusing on the Analysis of ‘Chakkan Neighbor’ Discourse in South Korea”, The Journal of the Humanities for Unification
• Vel´ asquez, Z., Esmail, J., Stoltz, H., Turkmen, F., Kuffuor, O., Burnett, J., . . . Park, E.A.& Dionne, K., “Undergraduates and Political Science Research: Insights from Research Assistants in a Minority-Serving Institution Lab”, PS: Political Science Politics, 56(4), 493-498, 2023

Book

• (Edited volume): Lee, A., Park, E.-A., Jo, H.,” Questioning Conventional Assumptions of Competition Dynamics”, Cambridge University Press, May 2025

Other Interests

Traveling, Hiking, Singing

Affiliated Academic Organizations

American Political Science Association(APSA)
International Political Science Association(IPSA)
Association of Korean Political Studies (AKPS)
International Studies Association (ISA)

Awards

Fulbright Foreign Student Scholarship Award, Korean American Educational Commission (KAEC), 2019-2021
American Political Science Association, Asia Pacific Fellowship, December 2020
Korean Studies Grant Program of the Academy of Korean Studies, 2020-2023 (AKS-2020-R11)
Political Science Department, University of California – Riverside, Gabbert Funds Department Graduate Student Research Award, Dissertation Research Support, 2023-2024
Center for Ideas and Society, University of California-Riverside, Jean Rowe Warnke Research Award, April 2023-December 2023
Political Science Department, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, Brain Korea Plus 21-Merit Based, March-July 2018