Professor and Chair, East Asian Studies
School of Humanities

east asian cinema, modern Korea, critical theory, Korean literature

East Asian Department

My Amazon Author Page

Center for Critical Korean Studies

The Mask Debate

Prof. Kyung Hyun Kim is a creative writer and an academic, who is currently a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and Film And Media Studies (affiliate), UC Irvine. He has worked with internationally renowned directors such as Hong Sang-soo, Lee Chang-dong and Marty Scorsese. Prof. Kim is author of Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of 21st Century, all of them published by Duke University Press, and a Korean-language novel entitled In Search of Lost G (Ireo beorin G-reul chajaso, 2014) about a Korean mother combing through the US in search of her missing son during his junior year in a Massachusetts prep school. He has coproduced and co-scripted two award-winning feature films Never Forever (2007, Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Main Competition) and The Housemaid (2010, Cannes Film Festival Main Competition), and his co-scripted film screenplay, The Origins of a Detective (Hyeongsa eui kiwon), won the cash prize (US$ 30,000) by being selected for the 2019 Best Film Development Project by the Korean Film Commission. He has also written The Mask Debate, his first theatre screenplay, which premiered in February 2021 through UCI’s Illuminations: Chancellor’s Initiative in Arts and Drama YouTube channel. (See link above) He serves currently as a resident director/screenwriter for Being Built Together (BBT) which provides support to underserved Korean-speaking individuals with developmental disabilities and their families.
He is the founding director of UCI’s Center for Critical Korean Studies.

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=3315

Last updated
03/17/2025