This book is about ardent Korean female fans of gay representation in the media, their status in contemporary Korean society, their relationship with other groups such as the gay population, and, above all, their contribution to reshaping the Korean media’s portrayal of gay people. Jungmin Kwon names the Korean female fandom for gay portrayals as … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 35)
The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History
A groundbreaking look at how the interrogation rooms of the Korean War set the stage for a new kind of battle—not over land but over human subjects Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean … [Read More]
The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War
The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days, but armistice talks occupied more than two of those years, as more than 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war refused to return to Communist China and demanded to go to Nationalist Taiwan, effectively hijacking the negotiations and thwarting the designs of world leaders at … [Read More]
A Magical Girl Retires
A millennial turned magical girl must combat climate change and credit card debt in this delightful, witty, and wildly imaginative ode to magical girl manga. Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul’s Mapo Bridge. But … [Read More]
The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting
The Korean War in Britain explores the social and cultural impact of the Korean War (1950-53) on Britain. Coming just five years after the ravages of the Second World War, Korea was a deeply unsettling moment in post-war British history. From allegations about American use of ‘germ’ warfare to anxiety over Communist use of ‘brainwashing’ … [Read More]
Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
THE FIRST EVER OFFICIAL BOOK: Published in celebration of BTS’s 10th Anniversary, stories that go beyond what you already know about BTS, including unreleased photos, QR codes of videos, and all album information. After taking their first step into the world on June 13, 2013, BTS will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut in … [Read More]
At Night he Lifts Weights
A disquieting vision of ecological dystopia in a collection by a major Korean writer. An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While … [Read More]
Korea and Its Futures: Unification and the Unfinished War
Despite the passage of over forty years since the official end of the civil war in Korea, the north and the south sections of the country remain technically at war. In Korea and its Futures , Roy Grinker argues that the continued conflict between North and South Korea, and the prospects for peace on the … [Read More]
The Black Orb
A piercingly dark, surreal satire on mass panic, disaster response and modern masculinity One evening in downtown Seoul, Jeong-su is smoking a cigarette outside when he sees something impossible: a huge black orb appears out of nowhere and sucks his neighbour inside. The orb soon begins consuming other people and no one knows how to … [Read More]
Your Utopia
By the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from the Korean by Anton Hur, Your Utopia is full of tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. “Nothing concentrates the mind like Chung’s terrors, which will shrivel you to a bouillon cube of your most primal instincts” (Vulture), yet these stories … [Read More]
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
There was only one thing on her mind. I must start a bookshop. Yeong-ju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeong-ju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, divorces her husband, and follows her dream. She … [Read More]
Born of This Land: My Life Story
Born of This Land: My Life Story is an English translation of the Chung Ju-yung’s autobiography. Chung ju-yung is the founding chairman of the Hyundai Group. The story begins with the escape from his home to the beginning of Chung’s first auto repair shop. Source: listing on Han Books [Read More]
Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea and Japan
Two tigers cannot share the same mountain – Chinese proverb Despite geographical proximity, cultural similarities, and shared status as highly powerful nations, China, Korea and Japan love to hate each other. Why? In search of an answer, Michael Booth journeys across East Asia to explore the mutual animosity that frequently threatens to draw the world … [Read More]
The Logic of Compressed Modernity
Most theories of modernity are based, explicitly or implicitly, on the development of Western societies since the late medieval period, but these theories are of limited value for understanding the development of societies in Asia and other parts of the world, where the process of modernization took place under different circumstances and often in a … [Read More]
Glory Hole
A ground-breaking new collection of queer poetry from a leading contemporary Korean poet. Kim Hyun’s Glory Hole is the first Korean queer poetry collection. Featuring gay teens, elders, cats, caterpillars, robots, and other unexpected characters, Kim’s fifty-one eccentric poems trace themes of love, sexual desire, abandonment, destitution, and death. In recounting the splendid yet tragic journeys of … [Read More]
Mater 2-10
International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story — an epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history. Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from … [Read More]