Talk on 'The Story of Soju: Distillation in Mongol Korea, its Eurasian Roots, and Global Context', by Prof Hyunhee Park

Cambridge Central Asia Forum in collaboration with the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge invites you to a talk by
 

Hyunhee Park, Professor of History at the City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Center

 on 

 'The Story of Soju: Distillation in Mongol Korea, its Eurasian Roots, and Global Context'

 Date: 5 November 2021

Time: 11am-1pm

Venue: Room S1 (Alison Richard Building)

Online: Zoom Registration https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJModuyrpzIsHtAqgAhiw_rippO-pyTBVt6z

Abstract: This talk looks at the world-historical development of spirits in the Eurasian context. It tries and discerns within the context of the Mongol World Empire the origins of soju, also called arak on occasion, to understand technology transfer from a global perspective beginning in the 13th century. In this context, the transfer of spirits popular in the Mongol Empire, which influenced most of the Eurasian societies in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, Koryŏ, connected to the Mongols as a “vassal” state, is a well-documented case of the spread of spirits in world history. The origins of the distilled liquors for popular consumption have become a topic of heated debate within a larger context of world history. What is known is that in the late Koryŏ period, when distilled liquors called soju and arak, the latter from Arabic (ʿaraq), first appear under those two names in Korean sources, a great variety of other spirits known generally as arak, in Mongolian arkhi, the Turkic arajhi, had also begun to spread widely in Eurasia. This talk will explore and locate Korean national history and the place of Soju within global historical narratives.

Biography: Hyunhee Park (Ph.D. Yale University) is Professor of History at the City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Center. She specializes in the history of cross-cultural contacts in East Asia and the Islamic World, in Sino-Islamic contacts in particular, in the Mongol Empire, and global history, focusing on information/knowledge transfers, including transfers of geographical knowledge, foodways, and distillation technologies. She authored Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia (2012), Soju: A Global History (2021), and 30 articles for academic journals and edited volumes.  

Everyone is welcome.

For more information please go to https://centralasia.group.cam.ac.uk/events/cambridge-central-asia-forum-gcrf-compass-centre-development-studies-seminar-series

This seminar series is organised in collaboration with UKRI GCRF COMPASS Project & School of International Studies at Jeonbuk National University (Republic of Korea)