Grant Success: "The Semiotics of Koreanness in the Asia-Pacific" (SKAP-Lab)
MUKSRH members Lucien Brown and Daniel Pieper are part of a team that has successfully landed an AKS (Academy of Korean Studies) Laboratory Grant worth 300 million KRW (around $330,000 AUD) over three years. The project, titled “The Semiotics of Koreanness in the Asia-Pacific” and stylised as “SKAP-Lab”, also involves Jess Kruk (University of Western Australia) and Eldin Milak (Curtin University).
The SKAP-Lab project explores the transnational spread of Korean language and cultural semiotics in the Asia-Pacific, highlighting how Korean cultural influence is reshaping traditional global hierarchies. The research explores how the Hangul script, Korean words and expressions, gestures such as the “finger heart”, and other symbols associated with Koreanness are taking hold in the Asia-Pacific. The team will conduct extensive research in Australia, Indonesia and other locations across the region. By analyzing the continuum of contexts extending from Korea through Southeast Asia and to Australia, the project captures the diverse ways in which Koreanness is reinterpreted across different cultural and linguistic landscapes.
A key innovation of SKAP-Lab is its move beyond the perspective of the Korean diaspora to examine how non-Korean local populations engage with and reshape Koreanness. The project integrates semiotics, sociolinguistics, cultural history, and urban placemaking to develop a comprehensive, multimodal framework for analysing the spread of transnational cultural phenomena.
