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Finalists for the position of assistant professor of science, technology, and society will present a research talk.

Hae-Seo Kim, PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology, UC Irvine, will discuss "Haunting Outer Space: Militarized Space Science, Shamanism, and Cosmological Care in South Korea."

This talk focuses on a satellite operations center on Jeju Island, South Korea, which was constructed over the remains of a village that had been destroyed during the anti-communist “4.3 massacres” that killed more than 30,000 Jeju islanders between 1948 and 1954. Kim shows how massacre haunts contemporary space science, unsettling narratives of technological progress and national pride. South Korean activists who oppose the siting of the space program in Jeju are staging shamanic rituals to guide and care for the souls buried under the satellite operations center. Through the rituals, the political memory of 4.3 massacres is transformed into a cosmological story—one that invokes the stars, the sun, and the wider universe. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork, Kim analyzes Korean shamanistic understanding of ghosts, outer space, and haunting through the framework of “cosmological care,” showing how these rituals both honor the dead and contest the extension of militarized science into outer space.