From the publisher’s website: How and why are the Kims rational? There is no consensus about either the Kims’ rationality or how best to determine if they are rational actors. Rationality in the North Korean Regime offers a concise and finite method to assess rationality by examining over ten cases of provocations from the Korean War to … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 54)
Contemporary Korean Ballet: Scenes and Stars
From the publisher’s website: Contemporary Korean Ballet introduces today’s Korean ballet with concise yet sufficient, detailed explanation. Today’s ballet is divided into romantic and classical ballet popular during the 19th century and a variety of creative ballet pieces since the 20th century. Ballet of Russia, Europe, and the US have long positioned themselves. Japan and … [Read More]
Contemporary Korean Theater: Beyond Tradition and Modernization
From the publisher’s website: Korean Theater from the 1970s up to the Present The 1970s in Korea saw the establishment of Korean theater’s identity and development of contemporary characteristics in terms of theatrical aesthetics. This book examines Korean theater from the 1970s up to the present. The focus of this volume attempts to examine original … [Read More]
Choreographers in Motion: Retrospective and Perspectives
From the publisher’s website: Choreographers in Motion explores the lives and works of representative contemporary dance choreographers of Korea, primarily based in Seoul. The artists selected are examined in detail through interviews by thoroughly investigating their education, influences, and creative process that determines their aesthetic inclination. The artists are presented in chronological order, and are further … [Read More]
Dancing Korea: New Waves of Choreographers and Dance Companies
From the publisher’s website: Koreans have always enjoyed and appreciated dance. In the past, Korean dance was intimately rooted in people’s everyday lives, and the ideas that governed everyday life in turn greatly impacted the form and content of dance. However, with the turn of the modern era, Korea began to adopt Western culture, and … [Read More]
Acts and Scenes: Western Drama in Korean Theater
From the publisher’s website: Acts and Scenes: An Introduction of Western Drama in Korean Theater Almost 400 playwrights from about 25 countries and more than 1,000 dramas have been introduced to Korea in the brief span of 100 years despite the fact that Korea has a vastly different culture, history, and tradition. While the history … [Read More]
Daehangno: Theater District in Seoul
From the publisher’s website: Daehangno is generally called a street of youth. However, it does not mean it is only frequented by young people. Daehangno is where the youthful passion of elderly artists is still tangible, where the youthful ardor of retired professors is still palpable and where the budding romance of late poets is … [Read More]
Korean Impact on Japanese Culture: Japan’s Hidden History
From the dust jacket: This account of the founding of Japan’s imperial line and the subsequent introduction of Buddhism is a major extension beyond already published works. Both in the East and the West, scholars have customarily ignored the pivotal role played by Koreans in the early centuries of Japan’s cultural development. Facts are drawn … [Read More]
East and West: Fusion of Horizons
In East and West: Fusion of Horizons, Kwang-Sae Lee seeks to find and develop themes of mutual resonance in Eastern and Western thoughts, trying to interpret across boundaries of culture and age. The book discusses some general “methodological problems” pertaining to the “Meeting of East and West,” Confucianism and Kantian moral philosophy, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and … [Read More]
Tradition, Treaties and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Choson Korea 1850 – 1910
Relations between the Chosŏn and Qing states are often cited as the prime example of the operation of the “traditional” Chinese ”tribute system.” In contrast, this work contends that the motivations, tactics, and successes (and failures) of the late Qing Empire in Chosŏn Korea mirrored those of other nineteenth-century imperialists. Between 1850 and 1910, the … [Read More]
Deconstruction/Construction: The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project in Seoul
From the publisher’s website: The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon River that runs through Seoul, Korea, in a mere twenty-nine months—transitioning from an outmoded highway into a multipurpose performative infrastructure piece of unprecedented size—merits recognition as a seminal project in contemporary urban design. This remarkable achievement recovers the biological and social ecology of the city and … [Read More]
Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea: The Onoda Cement Factory
From the publisher’s website: This book is a study of labor relations and the first generation of skilled workers in colonial Korea, a subject crucial to the understanding of modernization in twentieth-century Korea. Born in rural Korea, these workers confronted both the colonial experience and the modern workplace as they interacted with Japanese managers and … [Read More]
Division System in Crisis
From the publisher’s website: Paik Nak-chung is one of Korea’s most incisive contemporary public intellectuals. By training a literary scholar, he is perhaps best known as an eloquent cultural and political critic. This volume represents the first book-length collection of his writings in English. Paik’s distinctive theme is the notion of a “division system” on the … [Read More]
Modern Korea and Its Others: Perceptions of the Neighbouring Countries and Korean Modernity
From the publisher’s website: The period spanning the 1880s to 1945 was a crucially important formative time for Korea, during which understandings of modernity were largely shaped by the images of Korea’s neighbours to the east, west and north. China, Japan and Russia represented at some moments modern threats, but also denoted a range of … [Read More]
The Koreas: The Birth of Two Nations Divided
From the publisher’s website: What history, pop culture, and diaspora can teach us about North and South Korea today. Korea is one of the last divided countries in the world. Twins born of the Cold War, one is vilified as an isolated, impoverished, time-warped state with an abysmal human rights record and a reclusive leader … [Read More]
The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History
Ever since Korea was first divided at the end of World War II, the tension between its northern and southern halves has riveted, and threatened to embroil, the rest of the world. In this landmark history, now thoroughly revised and updated in conjunction with Korea expert Robert Carlin, veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer grippingly describes how … [Read More]