Please note: This session is planned to be held both in-person and virtually EST through Zoom. This webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Once you've registered, the joining information will be sent to your email. Register at: https://myumi.ch/Jpd45

Last year saw both South Korea and Japan transformed by traumatic public events that have rekindled the debate over how these two countries with poor track-records in mental health and some of the highest suicide rates in the world deal with the repercussions of mass trauma. The Halloween stampede in Seoul, which resulted in 159 people dead and scores more injured, and the assassination of Japan's longest serving prime minister in Japan, Shinzo Abe, several months earlier, have left the East Asian societies in need of mourning, only to see the domestic debate overtaken by domestic politics. That has left the victims—and the societies at large—with unanswered questions about the state of public mental health. To address these questions, the roundtable will bring together two journalists with extensive experience in East Asia covering politics and society to discuss the role of media in managing mass trauma.

KyeongRak Min is a reporter in the media strategy department for Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, where he has covered the economy, finance, social affairs and North Korea. He has done extensive reporting on the societal and policy roots of Korea’s high suicide rate, and directed a short film about Seoul’s “Suicide Bridge.” Before working as a reporter, Min produced documentaries for the Wonju station of MBC, a major South Korean broadcasting company. Min majored in public administration at Yonsei University and earned a master’s degree in economics at Yonsei Graduate School.

Antoni Slodkowski was the Tokyo correspondent for the Financial Times and the deputy bureau chief at Reuters in Tokyo. In that role, Slodkowski led the bureau’s politics and general news team and its coverage of the Olympics and the pandemic. He returned to Japan after four years in Myanmar, where his team covered the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, winning the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. A native of Poland, Slodkowski is a graduate of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Moderated by Ann Lin, Director, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies & Professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, the Nam Center for Korean Studies, and the Wallace House Center for Journalists.

Asia in the Headlines is made possible by the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education through the East Asia National Resource Center Title VI Grant.