There have been recent accusations that I acted unethically in my ethnographic field research and writing. Namely, I have been accused of using some of my interlocutors’ real names in my dissertation and a chapter based on it without obtaining informed consent from them.

The accusations emerged in conjunction with my published chapter in a 2020 edited volume. When the volume was published, I was contacted by two of my interlocutors who told me that I had included their stories without their consent and used their real names without their permission. This came as a shock to me, as I believed that I had informed verbal consent, a common mode of IRB-approved consent in anthropology. I must have misunderstood the situation or my relationship with these two individuals. Nevertheless, I was working under the belief that they had given me consent. I had told everyone that I was a PhD student conducting research on South Korea between 2015 to 2016. I had explained my project to everyone with whom I engaged and provided more details to those individuals I wished to include in my research project. I had more information I could provide anyone, in Korean, if they asked for it. I was always upfront and honest about my role as a researcher and never hid or lied about the fact that I was conducting research. Participation was always voluntary.

I included the real names of those two interlocutors for two reasons. The first was that I was told that one of the interlocutors’ stories would be part of a public collection of stories, and so I used that interlocutor’s real name to avoid plagiarism. I believed that the story would be public, though I must have misunderstood the context in which the story had been collected and was being further curated. As it turns out, the story was never published. The second reason was that I had cited the second interlocutor’s published work elsewhere in my dissertation and wanted to triangulate data between my ethnography and their writing. This was a mistake. I believed that because many of my interlocutors are prolific writers and often publish under their real name that they are public figures. Throughout my research, some interlocutors indicated to me that they wanted their real names used or did not care if I used their real name. Broadly, however, I was trying to tell my interlocutors’ stories in ways I thought they wanted them told. I wanted to humanize them—not reduce their stories to anonymized data.

After the two interlocutors, whose identities I had disclosed unintentionally against their will, contacted me, I immediately reached out to the University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board (IRB) for guidance. The IRB informed me that real names should not have been used as per my own IRB protocol. The only reason I can think for this failure is that I had become so fixated on the data and the details while writing that I failed to consider what my IRB protocol had said.

My research seeks to document and understand the hurt and violence that queer Koreans experience due to the Korean state and dominant social norms, and so I was mortified that I had caused similar hurt to these two interlocutors. Therefore, I responded to both interlocutors that I alone was responsible, that I apologize, and that I would work to rectify my mistake. In addition to the IRB, I also contacted my dissertation advisor and my mentor for advice on how I should handle this situation. I immediately informed the university of this mistake and asked the university to take my dissertation offline until I made the necessary changes to the dissertation, with both my advisor’s and the university’s approval.

Most importantly, I removed all ethnographic mention of these two individuals and all associated stories attributed to them. As part of the dissertation revision process, I renamed all interlocutors with pseudonyms. I confirmed with my key interlocutors, mentioned in the dissertation, that I had permission to use our interactions and showed them a copy of the dissertation with their stories/interactions highlighted. However, I was unable to locate or lost contact with some of my interlocutors. In these cases, I removed mention of them from my dissertation, I collected similar experiences together to make composite characters, or I intentionally blurred details about the person (such as gender, work affiliation, etc.). For some of my interlocutors, I also have informed consent forms signed. Once these changes were made and approved by my advisor, I submitted the revised dissertation to the university, and it was accepted.

As for the chapter that was initially published in the edited volume but later removed, I was completely transparent with the edited volume’s university press and editor. I was initially in contact with the editor of the volume given that the two interlocutors first contacted both of us. Throughout the entire process, I kept the press and editor apprised of my communications with the two individuals. In my initial email to the press, I wrote that I was willing to completely retract my chapter. I thought that this would be the most ethical response to the situation. The publisher and editor were initially reluctant or unresponsive to this option, so I spent a few subsequent months working to remove the stories of the two individuals from the chapter. I again suggested retracting the chapter. They agreed, which meant that they re-released the physical and digital volume without my chapter. I also did my best to encourage individuals to not use the chapter in their research or teaching.

Some have asked why I have remained silent about the situation. Up to now, I have not made any public statement about the incident because I was worried about drawing attention to the identities of the two Korean individuals in question. I now address this issue because one of the individuals has recently made a public statement regarding my dissertation and the aforementioned book chapter. In light of this new publicity, it is my responsibility to not only acknowledge the mistake, but to take responsibility for it and to apologize publicly for all the hurt I have caused and that my past actions may cause in the future.

My mistake was rooted in my failure to properly care for the stories of my interlocutors. Ethnographers are caretakers to stories. But ethnography is complex and messy and lends itself to misunderstandings, missteps, and misinterpretations: conversations may happen while walking from one place to another, they may happen over dinner, a group of people may be gathered to discuss certain issues at a meeting. Some researchers may use written consent forms, especially if a project is interview-based. But ethnography is not solely interviews; it involves participant observation, which is simultaneously anthropologists’ greatest tool and their Achilles’ heel.

Participant observation not only includes the impromptu conversations in the hallways or the attendance to meetings and events. It is equally about participation over time. Anthropologists live with their interlocutors, sometimes in their actual homes. When the walls between daily living and research fade from view, especially as time carries on, how then are we to place and understand informed consent? This question is part of a much larger conversation happening in anthropology around informed consent and ethics (e.g., Bell 2014; Bell and Wynn 2020; Wynn and Israel 2018).

When writing, though, I forgot to ask important questions. Were these stories necessary for the chapter? Were the details I included—not just in these stories but all stories—necessary or giving too much away? Most importantly, would my interlocutors and their stories be sufficiently cared for if I included those stories and details? I also fear that my white privilege and positionality enabled me to overlook these questions while writing my dissertation and this chapter. They enabled me to focus exclusively on the data and the details while forgetting about the necessary care work of my interlocutors. And as a result, I broke the trust of some of my interlocutors. As caretaker to stories, I did not take care of them well enough. And regardless, I should not have used interlocutors’ real names in the aforementioned chapter and dissertation. I take responsibility for my shortcomings and deeply apologize for the harms that I have caused. I also regret any negative professional or personal consequences to the editor of the collection and the authors of the other chapters, who in no way should bear the blame for my action and inaction.

The ongoing conversations in anthropology on informed consent point towards a friction that anthropologists and ethnographers see between ethnographic methods and current ethics review (Bell and Wynn 2020). In light of my mistakes, I urge anthropologists to be in conversation about informed consent as an emergent relation that can shift over time and contexts. Informed consent is not only a technical matter to be decided in advance in an IRB protocol but is an intimate part of the very relations and forms of care that are the fabric of ethnographic research.

Bell, Kirsten. 2014. “Resisting Commensurability: Against Informed Consent as an Anthropological Virtue.” American Anthropologist 116 (3): 511–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12122.

Bell, Kirsten, and L. L. Wynn. 2020. “Research Ethics Committees, Ethnographers and Imaginations of Risk.” Ethnography 0 (0): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120983862.

Wynn, L. L., and Mark Israel. 2018. “The Fetishes of Consent: Signatures, Paper, and Writing in Research Ethics Review.” American Anthropologist 120 (4): 795–806. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13148.