SEMINAR: Asian Studies Seminar Series

Ageing is a significant political and social issue in South Korean public discourses, and current demographic projections suggest that without significant intervention South Korea will become an aged society within the next two decades. Unsurprisingly, then, in much of current research on ageing, the collective body of the elderly population is constructed either as a looming fiscal problem to be managed, or a medicalised object of care that is threatening to turn into a social problem of epic proportions unless urgently addressed. The ageing body in these discourses is therefore constructed as a macrolevel problem to be solved, and focuses on finding solutions to how policy makers should respond to and manage the perceived challenges that the ageing population is seen to pose to future governments. However, the embodied ageing body is by and large absent from these discourses. This presentation will seek to fill this lacuna in existing research by analysing microlevel processes of how the ageing bodies and technologies of the self (such as cosmetic surgery and more invasive beauty enhancements) are linked with macro perspectives on ageing and with broader ideas of emerging biosocial order in Korea in individual contexts.