From the publisher’s website: Korean traditional landscape architecture is among the most treasured cultural developments made over the thousands of years of Korean culture. This book illustrates the history and cultural background of Korean traditional landscape architecture, showing the characteristics of each type of Korean landscape architecture: royal palaces, residential areas, walled towns, retreat gardens, […]
Archives: Books
The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea
From the publisher’s website: In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world’s most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short […]
The Changing Face of Korean Cinema: 1960 to 2015
From the publisher’s website: The rapid development of Korean cinema during the decades of the 1960s and 2000s reveals a dynamic cinematic history which runs parallel to the nation’s political, social, economic and cultural transformation during these formative periods. This book examines the ways in which South Korean cinema has undergone a transformation from an […]
Key Papers on Korea: Essays Celebrating 25 Years of the Centre of Korean Studies, SOAS, University of London
From the publisher’s website Key Papers on Korea is a commemorative collection of papers celebrating 25 years of the Centre of Korean Studies (CKS), SOAS, University of London that have been written by senior academics and emerging scholars. The subjects covered in this collection reflect the different research interests and different strengths of the CKS and […]
Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910-1945
From the publisher’s website: Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910-1945 highlights the complex interaction between indigenous activity and colonial governance, emphasizing how Japanese rule adapted to Korean and missionary initiatives, as well as how Koreans found space within the colonial system to show agency. Topics covered range from economic development and national identity to […]
Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising
From the publisher’s website: The Kwangju Uprising – “Korea’s Tiananmen” – is one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 turned into a bloody people’s revolt. In the two decades […]
Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag
From the publisher’s website: This is the remarkable and wrenching memoir of a South Korean dissident who was unjustly accused of spying for the North Koreans and jailed for nineteen years as a political prisoner. The updated English-language edition traces Suh Sung’s experiences as a Korean citizen of Japan before his incarceration, his time in […]
Korea’s Democratization
From the publisher’s website: The Republic of Korea is regarded as a shining example of democracy in East Asia. Despite this significant achievement, Korea’s democracy in practice has been plagued by political gridlock, severe factional infighting, a lack of social capital and cooperation between civil society and political institutions, and leadership behavior that calls to […]
New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves
From the publisher’s website: New Korean Cinema charts the dramatic transformation of South Korea’s film industry from the democratization movement of the late 1980s to the 2000s new generation of directors. The author considers such issues as government censorship, the market’s embrace of Hollywood films, and the social changes which led to the diversification and […]
Homo Maskus (K-Poet 18)
From the listing at Interpark: The year that started with masks is ending with masks. How often have I left my mask behind and had to go back for it? Looking back, it’s all my fault. The past days of heedless living are observing my behavior closely today. (Poet’s Note) The poems of things that […]
A Boy Is Looking at the White Moon from a Classroom Under the Sea (K-Poet 17)
From the Interpark website: I feel that that I am writing poems seriously. For that, I am indebted to the late Seoung Chan-gyeong (1930-2013), who wrote poems more seriously than I. He was a disciple of beauty and also never stopped searching for the truth. I feel that I belong to a different world than […]
Kim Ki-duk
From the publisher’s website: Born in 1960, the South-Korean film director Kim Ki-duk is today counted among the most prominent directors of the new movement of contemporary cinema while at the same time resolutely remaining outside the cinema industry. From his very first films, he has been noticed at international film festivals such as Berlin […]
Kim Ki-duk
From the publisher’s website: A searing study of a controversial international auteur. This study investigates the controversial motion pictures written and directed by the independent filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, one of the most acclaimed Korean auteurs in the English-speaking world. Propelled by underdog protagonists who can only communicate through shared corporeal pain and extreme violence, Kim’s […]
Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema
From the publisher’s website: The colonial experience of the early twentieth century shaped Korea’s culture and identity, leaving a troubling past that was subtly reconstructed in South Korean postcolonial cinema. Relating postcolonial discourses to a reading of Manchurian action films, kisaeng and gangster films, and revenge horror films, Parameters of Disavowal shows how filmmakers reworked, […]
Contemporary Korean Cinema: Culture, Identity and Politics
From the publisher’s website: The first in-depth, comprehensive study of Korean cinema offering original insight into the relationships between ideology and the art of cinema from East Asian perspectives. Combines issues of contemporary Korean culture and cinematic representation of the society and people in both North and South Korea. Covers the introduction of motion pictures […]
South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema
From the publisher’s website: Immediately following the Korean War, South Korea’s film industry flourished with vibrant local production of high-quality films. Characterized by its stunning melodramas, this “Golden Age” of South Korean cinema produced a body of work as historically, aesthetically, and politically significant as that of other well-known national film movements such as Italian […]
The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs
From the publisher’s website: For the past decade, the Korean film industry has enjoyed a renaissance. With innovative storytelling and visceral effects, Korean films not only have been commercially viable in the domestic and regional markets but also have appealed to cinephiles everywhere on the international festival circuit. This book provides both an industrial and […]