From the publisher’s website: Since the Korean War, gijichon—U.S. military camp towns—have been fixtures in South Korea. The most popular entertainment venues in gijichon are clubs, attracting military clientele with duty-free alcohol, music, shows, and women entertainers. In the 1990s, South Korea’s rapid economic advancement, combined with the stigma and low pay attached to this work, led to […]
Archives: Books
Trafficking Women in Korea: Filipina migrant entertainers
From the publisher’s website: Based on in-depth ethnographic work, this book presents a study of Filipinas trafficked to South Korea, focusing on women who entered South Korea as migrant entertainers and subsequently became deployed in exploitative work environments around US military bases there. It contributes to the extension of our knowledge about human trafficking in […]
North Korea: Like Nowhere Else – Two Years of Living in the World’s Most Secretive State
From the publisher’s website: What happens when you travel to a place where even basic truths are ambiguous? Where sometimes you can’t trust your own eyes or feelings? Where the divide between real and imagined is never clear? For two years, Lindsey Miller lived in North Korea, long regarded as one of the most closed […]
Ginseng and Borderland: Territorial Boundaries and Political Relations Between Qing China and Choson Korea, 1636-1912
From the publisher’s website: Ginseng and Borderland explores the territorial boundaries and political relations between Qing China and Choson Korea during the period from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries. By examining a unique body of materials written in Chinese, Manchu, and Korean, and building on recent studies in New Qing History, Seonmin Kim […]
Great Journeys of the World
From the dust jacket: In Great Journeys of the World, six talented individuals – among them writers and actors, a poet and a musician – embark on journeys of special interest in some of the most spectacular parts of the world. … In Korea, the world’s leading solo percussionist, Evelyn Glennie, explores Korea’s musical culture […]
Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom
From the publisher’s website: Patriots, Traitors and Empires is an account of modern Korean history, written from the point of view of those who fought to free Korea from the domination of foreign empires. It traces the history of Korea’s struggle for freedom from opposition to Japanese colonialism starting in 1905 to North Korea’s current efforts […]
Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea
From the publisher’s website: Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who was forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, […]
This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood
From the publisher’s website: Hyok Kang was eighteen when he escaped from North Korea, a country locked away from the outside world. This personal, illustrated account of school days in a rigidly communist institution and everyday life with his family and community provides a rare glimpse of this secretive nation. His shocking and moving portrayal […]
South Korea’s Education Exodus: The Life and Times of Early Study Abroad
From the publisher’s website: South Korea’s Education Exodus analyzes Early Study Abroad in relation to the neoliberalization of South Korean education and labor. With chapters based on demographic and survey data, discourse analysis, and ethnography in destinations such as Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States, the book considers the complex motivations that spur families […]
Korea’s Future and the Great Powers
From the publisher’s website: The eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula will send political and economic reverberations throughout Northeast Asia and will catalyze the struggle over a new regional order among the four great powers of the Pacific—Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. Korea’s Future and the Great Powers addresses the vital issues of how to […]
Top-Down Democracy in South Korea
From the publisher’s website: While popular movements in South Korea rightly grab the headlines for forcing political change and holding leaders to account, those movements are only part of the story of the construction and practice of democracy. In Top-Down Democracy in South Korea, Erik Mobrand documents another part – the elite-led design and management of […]
Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japan’s War, 1937-1945
From the publisher’s website: Fighting for the Enemy explores the participation of Koreans in the Japanese military and supporting industries before and during World War II, first through voluntary enlistment and eventually through conscription. Contrary to popular belief among Korean nationalists, this involvement was not entirely coerced. Brandon Palmer examines this ambiguous situation in the […]
Peace Corps Volunteers and the Making of Korean Studies in the United States
From the publisher’s website: From 1966 through 1981 the Peace Corps sent more than two thousand volunteers to South Korea, to teach English and provide healthcare. A small yet significant number of them returned to the United States and entered academia, forming the core of a second wave of Korean studies scholars. How did their […]
Political Leadership in Korea
From the publisher’s website: Included in this volume are studies of the traditional leadership of the Yi dynasty as well as twentieth-century legislative, party, and bureaucratic leadership, and an evaluation of views of political leaders in South Korea, as well as two studies of the Communist system in North Korea. Dae-Sook Suh is professor emeritus of […]
International Impact of Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-1945
From the publisher’s website: In recent years, discussion of the colonial period in Korea has centered mostly on the degree of exploitation or development that took place domestically, while international aspects have been relatively neglected. Colonial discourse, such as characterization of Korea as a “hermit nation,” was promulgated around the world by Japan and haunts […]
Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925
From the publisher’s website: By studying the early splits within Korean nationalism, Michael Robinson shows that the issues faced by Korean nationalists during the Japanese colonial period were complex and enduring. In doing so, Robinson, in this classic text, provides a new context with which to analyze the difficult issues of political identity and national […]