Date & Time: Friday, Oct 5, 2018, 2:00 pm (Talk 2:00-3:30 pm; Reception 3:30-4:30 pm)

Location: Levis Faculty Center, Room 300 (919 West Illinois Street, Urbana)

Dr. Roald Maliangkay discusses the cultural impact of shows and nightlife at the Seoul Walker Hill resort from 1962-2012. The Walker Hill, opened in 1963, comprised a hotel with a casino and other luxury amenities; however, it became known in particular for the Pacific Nightclub’s offer of Moulin Rouge-like revue dinner shows. These sometimes racy shows had a profound influence on Korean music and set new standards of performance in the industry. This talk will examine how one venue exerted so much influence on Korea’s music scene and what other factors made the Walker Hill resort so popular.

Dr. Roald Maliangkay is Associate Professor in Korean studies and Director of the Korea Institute at the Australian National University. Fascinated by the mechanics of cultural policy and the convergence of major cultural phenomena, Dr. Maliangkay analyses cultural industries, performance and consumption in Korea from the early twentieth century to the present. He is author of Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea's Central Folksong Traditions (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), and co-editor (with Jung-bong Choi) of K-pop: The International Rise of the Korean Music Industry (Routledge, 2015). He will be working on his current book project, entitled Accelerating Movements: The Introduction of Modern Time Management in Japanese Colonies.

Presented in partnership with the Institute for Korean Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington and made possible by the Core University Program Grant by the Academy of Korean Studies.