Young-a Park obtained her B.A. and M.A. from Seoul National University and Ph.D. from Harvard University in Social Anthropology. She is Associate Professor and the Graduate Director in the Asian Studies Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research and teaching interests cover issues of post-authoritarian politics, film industry, social movements, globalization, state-civil society relations, and migration in South Korea. Her first book—Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea—was published in 2015 by Stanford University Press. The book explored how South Korean independent filmmakers changed not only film institutions and policies but the ways in which people produce, consume, and think about film in South Korea. She is currently working on a new book on North Korean defectors’ strategies in obtaining cultural membership in the context of emergent neoliberal resettlement policies in South Korea.