For more than two hundred years after its establishment in 1392, the Chosŏn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with neighboring Ming China, which dwarfed it in size, population, and power. This remarkably long period of sustained peace was not an inevitable consequence of Chinese cultural and political ascendancy. In this book, … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 39)
Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
A cutting-edge journalistic exposé of self-care consumerism, using the extreme case South Korea to both celebrate the astounding growth of K-Beauty and South Korean pop culture as a global export and examine the dark implications for women in a looks-obsessed patriarchy, in a debut that asks the question: What is the future of beauty? From … [Read More]
Togani
Atmospheric and fast-paced, this novel of manners set in a provincial South Korean city leads readers through the silent corridors of a school for hearing-impaired children and the city’s foggy back streets and murky centers of power to a stirring courtroom climax. Gong Jiyoung’s Togani (The Crucible), published in Korean in 2009, is based on a historic case … [Read More]
Quietude: A Musical Anthropology of “Korea’s Hiroshima”
Most of us the world over do not know much about the nuclear experience, let alone the 70,000 Korean victims of the atomic bomb or their arts of life and survival. Quietude: A Musical Anthropology of “Korea’s Hiroshima” gives new insight into the overlooked and abused people who have lived and died on the margins … [Read More]
Writing Self, Writing Nation: A Collection of Essays on “Dictee” by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Five Asian American women celebrate Dictée while offering reconstructions of ethnicity, feminism, and nationalism. Essays by Hyun Yi Kang, Elaine H. Kim, Lisa Lowe, Shelley Sunn Wong, and artwork by Yong Soon Min. Source: Goodreads [Read More]
Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works
In her radical exploration of cultural and personal identity, the writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha sought “the roots of language before it is born on the tip of the tongue.” Her first book, the highly original postmodern text Dictee, is now an internationally studied work of autobiography. This volume, spanning the period between 1976 and … [Read More]
Korean Wave in World Englishes: The Linguistic Impact of Korea’s Popular Culture
This book examines the linguistic impact of the Korean Wave on World Englishes, demonstrating that the K-Wave is not only a phenomenon of popular culture, but also language. The “Korean Wave” is a neologism that was coined during the 1990s that includes K-pop, K-dramas, K-film, K-food, and K-beauty, and in recent years it has peaked … [Read More]
Archaeology of Psychotherapy in Korea: A study of Korean therapeutic work and professional growth
This is the first English book dedicated solely to the historical development of psychotherapy in Korea. It is an archaeological research of literature relating to the care and treatment of mind in Korean history in dialogue with spiritual, philosophical, cultural, social, and medical perspectives. It reviews the evolution of different approaches on mental illnesses covering … [Read More]
Globalizing Seoul: The City’s Cultural and Urban Change
In the decades following the 1997 Asian economic crisis, South Korea sought segyehwa (globalization). Evidence of this is no more evident than in the country’s capital, Seoul, where urban development has been central to making the city a global hub and not just the centre of the national economy. However, recent development projects differ from those of … [Read More]
Narratives of Nation-Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism
This book offers new insight on how key historical texts and events in Korea’s history have contributed to the formation of the nation’s collective consciousness. The work is woven around the unifying premise that particular narrative texts/events that extend back to the premodern period have remained important, albeit transformed, over the modern period and into … [Read More]
Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea
A major new history told from all sides, to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the armistice in the Korean War. In this blockbusting trade debut, distinguished American professor Sheila Miyoshi Jager interweaves international events and previously unknown personal accounts to give a brilliant new history of the war, its aftermath and its global impact … [Read More]
My GrandMom
From an award-winning Korean author comes a charming and joyful story of the bond between a little girl and her grandma. Gee-eun is a little girl whose parents work a lot. So she spends her days with her beloved grandmother. Grandma comforts Gee-eun when she’s sad to see her parents leaving and shares in all … [Read More]
Voices of the Korean Comfort Women: History Rewritten from Memories
An innumerable number of young women were taken from Korea during the Pacific War to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. These women including teenagers, euphemistically referred in Japanese documents as Comfort Women, were shipped to the vastly expanded battle fronts throughout the Japan-occupied territories covering from Northern China to Myanmar and to the South … [Read More]
ReFocus: The Films of Kim Ki-young
The first comprehensive scholarly volume on Kim Ki-young and his films in English Offers an innovative critical analysis of Kim Ki-young’s films from a range of fresh and nuanced perspectives Introduces a significant South Korean film auteur within the history of global cinema whose work has been previously overlooked Increases the understanding of modern South … [Read More]
Human-Animal Relations and the Hunt in Korea and Northeast Asia
Studies the hunt, animals and how regional dynamics informed local cultural practices on the Korean peninsula Elucidates the significance of the peninsula in regional and Eurasian history through detailing and navigating animals and the hunt, themes scholarship has overlooked. Reframes the struggle between a kingship and a powerful bureaucracy competing for authority over an expanding … [Read More]
Concealed Words
A debut English-language collection of hopeful and carefully attentive poems by one of South Korea’s most lauded young poets. This collection offers a selection of poems from Sin Yong-mok’s earlier collections, intended to serve as an illustration of his evolution as a poet, alongside a complete translation of the poems from his fourth collection, When … [Read More]