A Conversation with Asia Center Visiting Scholar Eunbin Chung
Eunbin Chung—Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Asia Center and the Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah—discusses her residency projects, including immigration attitudes in South Korea and Japan, K-culture’s reach, and how national confidence can create space for cooperation.
Q. Could you briefly describe your primary area of research and what you hope to achieve during your time as a visiting scholar at the Asia Center?
I am a political scientist who studies how identity and emotion shape cooperation and conflict, especially in East Asia. Having lived in South Korea, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and conducted fieldwork in China, I’ve seen how people can experience the same event yet come away with entirely different stories. Those experiences sparked my curiosity about how societies recover from conflict and how public opinion can shift from resentment to reconciliation. During my time at the Asia Center, I hope to explore how history, emotion, and culture interact in shaping political attitudes—and how we might better understand one another in a world that often feels divided and too easily forgets how much we share.
Q. Which specific project will you focus on during your residency, and why is now the right moment to pursue it?
I’m working on three projects that deal with how people interpret the world through identity and emotion. The first looks at immigration attitudes in South Korea and Japan, asking how people handle statistics that challenge their opinions. (Spoiler: sometimes not well.) The second examines South Korea’s cultural wave—from K-pop to Netflix dramas—and how it doubles as soft power between the United States and China. The third explores how feminist solidarity in South Korea has become a force for democratic resilience, looking at how women’s networks mobilized during the 2024 democratic crisis. Together, these projects explore how identity, culture, and emotion can drive cooperation as well as division in East Asia’s shifting political landscape.
Q. What do you see as the most pressing question or major emerging trend within your field of study?
We’re rethinking nationalism. The old story was that nationalism divides while globalization unites. Reality, as usual, is messier. A central question in my field is whether national identity can actually bring people together instead of driving them apart. My research suggests that when people feel confident and secure in who they are, they become more open to cooperation. Understanding how to turn confidence into empathy, rather than rivalry, might be one of the most important challenges of our time.
Q. Reflecting on your own path, what habits or decisions most helped you grow as a scholar, and what guidance would you offer to those just starting out?
Living and working across cultures taught me that every society has its own perspectives and assumptions, along with unique wisdom to share. I’ve learned the most from asking questions outside my comfort zone and from collaborating with people who think differently—from public health researchers to historians and experimental economists. I would also remind new researchers that when doing overseas fieldwork, it’s essential to really understand the country you’re working in and what’s happening on the ground. Every country has its own political climate and research regulations, and these can vary in ways that are not always obvious. Having conducted experimental research in China, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine, and the United States, I’ve learned that building genuine local connections and staying informed about each context makes the research more respectful, ethical, and insightful. My advice to new scholars is to stay curious, listen carefully, and let your research evolve in unexpected directions.
Q. Where does your work intersect with other disciplines, and what unexpected collaborations would you like to explore here?
My work sits at the crossroads of political psychology, international security, and conflict resolution. It engages with insights from history, sociology, and public health to understand how emotions and identity shape collective behavior in times of crisis. At the Asia Center, I’m especially interested in collaborations that connect social science with the humanities—for example, exploring how stories, symbols, and shared memories shape trust and cooperation across cultures.
Q. How do you envision your scholarship informing public conversations, policy, or community engagement beyond academia?
I hope my research helps people think differently about identity, emotion, and cooperation. Whether it’s how citizens interpret numeric data, how K-pop and culture influence diplomacy, or how feminist solidarity strengthens democracy, my goal is to connect rigorous evidence with real-world understanding. I want my work to encourage public conversations that are a little more thoughtful and a little less reactive. I have had opportunities to share my findings with policymakers, educators, and civic organizations, and I find that when we frame identity not as a zero-sum struggle but as a shared human experience, people listen differently. I like to think of my scholarship as a bridge between analysis and empathy—one that makes it just a bit easier for people, and perhaps even countries, to trust one another.
Q. What teaching philosophies inform your work, and what resources would you recommend to students interested in your field?
I believe politics is best learned by doing. In my classes, students don’t just read about international relations—they live it. They create their own countries, debate crises, negotiate alliances, and occasionally discover the fine art of diplomatic misunderstanding. Through these simulations, students see that politics isn’t just theory; it’s decision-making, persuasion, and cooperation in real time. I also try to help them find their voices, step by step, so that even the quietest ones feel confident leading a discussion by the end of the semester.
For students interested in political psychology or international relations, I recommend reading widely: academic journals, good journalism, and even novels that capture how Asians and Asian Americans experience politics in daily life. Curiosity, empathy, and a sense of wonder are the best research tools you can have.
About the Scholar:
Eunbin Chung (eunbinchung@fas.harvard.edu, https://www.eunbinc.com/) is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center and the Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah.
Her research focuses on international security, conflict resolution, and political psychology. She is the author of Pride, Not Prejudice: National Identity as a Pacifying Force in East Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2022), which received the American Library Association’s Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. The book draws on the social psychological theory of self-affirmation and applies it to international relations, showing that affirming national identity, or reflecting on what it means to belong to one’s country, can foster trust, acknowledgment of guilt, and more positive perceptions between states.
In 2025, Dr. Chung was named the L. Jackson Newell Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty Fellow, an honor recognizing faculty who demonstrate a deep passion for their work and a desire to communicate their work in the public interest. In 2022, she was selected as the Sherman Emerging Scholar by The Korea Society for her contributions to the field. Her research has been supported by the Academy of Korean Studies, Japan Foundation, and the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea, among others.
Dr. Chung earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She also plays an active role in professional service, serving as co-founder and Research Lead of the Korean Women Professors Association (KWPA, https://koreanwpa.org/) and as Executive Secretary and Governing Board member of the Association of Korean Political Studies (AKPS, https://www.akps.org/).