Kim Seong-Kon (; born 9 August 1949 in South Korea), also known as Seong-Kon Kim, is a South Korean academic, literary critic, film critic, columnist, editor and writer.
Kim was the president of the LTI Korea (Literature Translation Institute of Korea) in the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of South Korea, which was an undersecretary-level post. On May 19, 2017, Kim received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York "in recognition of the profound impact Professor Kim has had as a cultural and literary bridge between Korea and the United States." In 2018, Kim taught at George Washington University as Dean's Distinguished Visiting professor in the Humanities and also at the University of Málaga in Spain as a visiting professor. In the same year, Kim was decorated by Felipe VI, King of Spain, with La Orden del Merito Civil (Cruz de Oficial). In 2019, Kim taught at the University of California, Irvine, as a visiting professor. Currently, he is a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.
Early life and education
Kim received his Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, under the direction of the late Leslie A. Fiedler who first announced the Death of the Novel in the early sixties. Then he went to Columbia University to study comparative literature under the late Edward W. Said who authored "Orientalism." Upon completion of the Ph.D. coursework at Columbia, he joined the faculty of Seoul National University (SNU) in 1984.
Career
Academia
Kim was dean of the SNU School of Language Education (2001–2005), director of the Language Research Institute (2001), director of the American Studies Institute (1999–2001), and director of the SNU Residence Hall (1987–1989) of Seoul National University. He was also director of the Seoul National University Press (2009–2011) and president of the Association of Korean University Presses (2010–2011). Kim was also chairman of the organizing committee for the annual BESETO (Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo) International Conference (1999–2001). In addition, Kim was president of the LTI Translation Academy, which offers various courses on translation studies for foreign and domestic students, and publisher of the LTI Korea Press and the quarterly English literary journal, Korean Literature Now.
He was the founding president of the Korean Association of Literature and Film from 1998 to 2001, and was president of the International Association of Comparative Korean Studies from 2001 to 2003, president of the Korean Association of Modern Fiction in English from 2004 to 2006, and president of the American Studies Association of Korea from 2007 to 2008. Kim was chairman of the Development and Promotion Council of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea from 2004 to 2005.
Kim has taught at Pennsylvania State University, University of California, Berkeley, and Brigham Young University as a visiting professor, and conducted research at Harvard Yenching Institute, University of Oxford and University of Toronto as a visiting scholar. A prizewinning literary critic, Kim initiated the debate on literary postmodernism for the first time in Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was also a pioneer in postcolonialism and cultural studies in Korea. His books on postmodernism, postcolonialism, and cultural studies have greatly influenced writers and scholars in the Korean republic of letters. In 2008, Kim received the prestigious Kim Hwantae Award for Literary Criticism and in 2014 the Woo Ho Humanities Award.
Kim was editor of literary journals such as Literature & Thought, 21st Century Literature and Contemporary World Literature. In addition, Kim has been a regularly featured columnist for the Korea Herald since 2003. His Herald columns have frequently appeared in international media such as The Nation, the Progressive Party, USA, the China Post, the AsiaOne, the Pakistan Observer, the Star, Yahoo! News, the Asian Views, The Straits Times, The Kathmandu Post, The Statesman, The World Weekly and others. He was also appointed co-editor of Korea Journal published by the Korean National Commission for UNESO for 2015–2016. In 2017 Kim was asked by the New York Times to write a column for the editorial/opinion page.