Buhm Soon Park
Buhm Soon Park is an Endowed Chair Professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and serves as Director of the Center for Anthropocene Studies. His primary interest lies in the historical study of scientific concepts, disciplines, institutes, and policies from a global and comparative perspective. His current research focuses on the Great Acceleration in the Anthropocene, examining its regional and temporal unevenness as well as its common and overarching trends. He also explores the futures of biotechnology, while pursuing the fundamental question of trust in science across various cultural contexts.
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Session
Anthropocene history is as different from Holocene history as the Anthropocene Earth System is from the Holocene Earth System. The framework of World History straddles them both, positioning itself to answer the two big questions posed by Anthropocene history: (1) how did globally networked human systems come to overwhelm the Earth System in the middle of the 20th century? and (2) can our understanding of the past help us tackle current challenges? This panel tackles these questions through the lenses of population, energy, waste, and multispecies relations in Korea. South Korea's emergence as a prosperous modern nation from the international war (1950-53) at the beginning of the Cold War and its aftermath underscores the ironies of the Anthropocene. The postwar "great escape" from poverty and ill health described by economist Angus Deaton has been paralleled by the increased socioeconomic inequality and planetary boundary overshoot that came with the “Great Acceleration”. How to reconcile the imperatives of decency, democracy and resilience with the limits to growth is a challenge keenly felt in Korea as it is in the world writ large.