From the publisher’s website: The Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society is an accessible and interdisciplinary resource that explores the formation and transformation of Korean culture and society. Each chapter provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking overview on key topics, including: compressed modernity, religion, educational migration, social class and inequality, popular culture, digitalisation, diasporic cultures and cosmopolitanism. … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 59)
Nouveau-riche Nationalism and Multiculturalism in Korea: A media narrative analysis
From the publisher’s website: The unprecedented economic success of South Korea since the 1990s has led in turn to a large increase in the number of immigrants and foreign workers in Korean industries. This book describes and explains the experiences of discrimination and racism that foreigners and ‘new’ Koreans have faced in a multicultural South … [Read More]
Taekwondo: From a Martial Art to a Martial Sport
From the publisher’s website: This book provides a comprehensive overview of the historical, political, and technical evolution of taekwondo. Many of the supposedly ‘traditional’ and ‘ancient’ Korean cultural elements attached to taekwondo are, in fact, remnants of East Asia’s modernization drive, and largely inherited from the Japanese martial arts. The current historical portrayal has created … [Read More]
Confucianism and the Family
From the publisher’s website: An interdisciplinary exploration of the Confucian family in East Asia which includes historical, psychocultural, and gender studies perspectives. The family is central to societies that have been profoundly influenced by the Confucian, and later Neo-Confucian, mandate. This book examines the nature of family continuities and the internal family social and psychological … [Read More]
Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan
From the publisher’s website: Lords of the Sea revises our understanding of the epic political, economic, and cultural transformations of Japan’s late medieval period (ca. 1300–1600) by shifting the conventional land-based analytical framework to one centered on the perspectives of seafarers who, though usually dismissed as “pirates,” thought of themselves as sea lords. Over the course … [Read More]
Sovereign Violence: Ethics and South Korean Cinema in the New Millennium
South Korea is home to one of the most vibrant film industries in the world today, producing movies for a strong domestic market that are also drawing the attention of audiences worldwide. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of some of the most well-known and incendiary South Korean films of the millennial decade from nine … [Read More]
Korea: A Very Short Introduction
From the publisher’s website: Having spent centuries in the shadows of its neighbours China and Japan, Korea is now the object of considerable interest for radically different reasons— the South as an economic success story and for its vibrant popular culture; the North as the home to one of the world’s most repressive regimes, at … [Read More]
Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands
From the publisher’s website: Since the 1990s, the Chinese-North Korean border region has undergone a gradual transformation into a site of intensified cooperation, competition, and intrigue. These changes have prompted a significant volume of critical scholarship and media commentary across multiple languages and disciplines. Drawing on existing studies and new data, Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands brings … [Read More]
Troubled Transition: North Korea’s Politics, Economy and External Relations
From the publisher’s website: Kim Jong-il once declared he would transform North Korea into a “great and powerful country” by 2012, apparently believing that nuclear weapons would compel the international community to engage on his terms. With no such prospect in sight, North Korea faces a multitude of intractable problems. Will North Koreans accept his … [Read More]
Dynasty: The Hereditary Succession Politics of North Korea
From the publisher’s website: Scholar and senior journalist Kim Hakjoon provides a timely analysis of the rise of the Kim Il Sung family dynasty and the politics of leadership succession in Pyongyang, including Kim Jong Il’s death and the advent of his son Kim Jong Un. Drawing on official North Korean statements and leaked confidential … [Read More]
Salpuri-Chum, A Korean Dance for Expelling Evil Spirits: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of its Artistic Characteristics
From the publisher’s website: This book is a study of Salpuri-Chum, a traditional Korean dance for expelling evil spirits. The authors explore the origins and practice of Salpuri-Chum. The ancient Korean people viewed their misfortunes as coming from evil spirits; therefore, they wanted to expel the evil spirits to recover their happiness. The music for … [Read More]
The Devil’s Playground: Inside America’s Defense of the Deadly Korean DMZ
From the publisher’s website: The Devil’s Playground is a timely account of what it is like to serve along perhaps the most dangerous and sensitive strip of land in the world. In recent months two bullet-riddled attempted escapes from North to South brought worldwide headlines. And with Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un exchanging threats, the world hopes … [Read More]
The Korean War in Asia: A Hidden History
From the publisher’s website: This book takes a fresh look at the Korean War by considering the conflict from a Northeast Asian regional perspective. It highlights the connections of the war to earlier conflicts in the region and examines the human impact of the war on neighboring countries, focusing particularly on the ways in which … [Read More]
Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria
From the publisher’s website: Rethinking a key epoch in East Asian history, Hyun Ok Park formulates a new understanding of early-twentieth-century Manchuria. Most studies of the history of modern Manchuria examine the turbulent relations of the Chinese state and imperialist Japan in political, military, and economic terms. Park presents a compelling analysis of the constitutive … [Read More]
Transnational Sport: Gender, Media, and Global Korea
From the publisher’s website: Based on ethnographic research in Seoul and Los Angeles, Transnational Sport tells how sports shape experiences of global Koreanness, and how those experiences are affected by national cultures. Rachael Miyung Joo focuses on superstar Korean athletes and sporting events produced for transnational media consumption. She explains how Korean athletes who achieve success on … [Read More]
The Two Koreas and the Politics of Global Sport
From the publisher’s website: In ordinary circumstances, one could be forgiven for assuming that sport unites rather than divides people. But, as this first in-depth study of inter-Korean sporting life and competition over more than six decades clearly demonstrates, sport has in fact been held hostage to the ups and downs of inter-Korean political relations. … [Read More]