Shifting Landscape of Social Relationships and the Depression Epidemic in South Korea.
Abstract
Over the past two decades, South Korea has experienced a striking rise in depression, anxiety, and suicide. What if depression in contemporary South Korea is better understood as a relational crisis? Many of the most pressing social issues in Korean society— ultra-low fertility, growing aversion to marriage—are, at their core, problems of relationships. Focusing on the changing landscape of social relationships, this talk situates depression within wider transformations in Korean society. Accelerated modernization, urbanization, and digitalization have introduced new challenges to the dynamics of relationship‑making and sustaining.
Eun Kyong Shin is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Korea University. Shin is currently a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University [2025-2026]. Her work lies at the intersection of medical sociology, cognitive sociology, and social network analysis, with particular emphasis on the use of brain data to explore the cognitive dimensions of social connectivity. Her research has appeared in Nature Digital Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network, Scientific Reports, and Frontiers in Oncology. She is also a contributing author to The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Machine Learning (Oxford University Press). She holds a MPhil and PhD in Sociology (2015, Columbia University) and BA, MA in sociology (Korea University). Prior to joining KU, she was a research faculty at Columbia Law School, and a postdoc fellow at the University of Tennessee Medical School.
This event is organized by Institute for Asian Studies and co-sponsored by Department of Sociology.