Mineral Time, Bodily Time: Asbestos, Slow Disaster, and Toxic Politics in South Korea

Tuesday, April 16, 10:30 am ET over Zoom

This talk connects the history of development, the science of exposure, and the politics of the current public health crisis to illustrate how a slow disaster of asbestos, an indestructible mineral with pervasive geography, unfolds in South Korea. Asbestos was mined and industrialized during the Japanese colonial period in the 1930s and served as a foundational substance of Korea’s industrial development within changing political economies until the 1990s. At mines, inside factories, and in asbestos-roofed houses, asbestos exposure silently occurred only to be revealed en masse in the last two decades. In recent years, asbestos has been studied and regulated more prominently as an environmental health concern rather than an occupational hazard, generating new sets of uncertainties in science, regulation, and law. Questioning what makes a disaster slow, I will discuss how the politics of the asbestos disaster in South Korea is deeply rooted in framing the temporality of mineral, body, and exposure.

About our speaker: Yeonsil Kang is a curator at the National Science Museum of Korea, researching and exhibiting the history of S&T and the environment in East Asia.

Contact
Victor Seow
Associate Professor of the History of Science
Harvard University
https://scholar.harvard.edu/seow/STinAsia