Gender and Class in Contemporary South Korea: Intersectionality and Transnationality

From the publisher’s website:

This volume of essays by leading critical scholars examines gender and class in twenty-first-century South Korea from a transnational and intersectional perspective. Although gender and class have been central concerns in research on Korea for some time, studies have primarily focused on the role of gender and class in South Korea’s modernization in the latter half of the twentieth century and have overlooked the heterogeneity of Korean identity and the porousness of Korean boundaries. The contributors to this volume frame local phenomena in a global context while maintaining the complexity of simultaneous and dynamic changes in local social relations. By identifying current formulations of gender and class, they also show how legacies of the past continue into the present.

Contents

1. Introduction: Gender, Class, and Contemporary South Korea | Hae Yeon Choo, John Lie, Laura C. Nelson
2. Changelings and Cinderellas: Class In/equality, Gendered Social Im/mobility, and Post-Developmentalism in Contemporary South Korean Television Dramas | Jin-kyung Lee
3. Shrewd Entrepreneurs or Immoral Speculators? Desires, Speculation, and Middle-Class Housewives in South Korea, 1978–1996 | Myungji Yang
4. “My Skill”: Attachments and Narratives of Garment Workers in South Korea | Seo Young Park
5. Leave No Birthing Trace: The Politics of Health and Beauty in the South Korean Postpartum Care Market | Yoonjung Kang
6. Gendered Narratives of Transition to Adulthood among Korean Work-Bound Youth | Hyejeong Jo
7. Diverging Masculinities and the Politics of Aversion toward Ethnically Mixed Men in the Korean Military | Hyun Mee Kim
8. Maternal Guardians: Intimate Labor and the Pursuit of Gendered Citizenship among South Korean Volunteers Helping Migrant Women | Hae Yeon Choo