From the publisher’s website: South Korean conglomerates, or ‘chaebol,’ such as Hyundai and Samsung, play a far more important role in the Korean economy than do comparable large firms in the US and Japanese economies. Despite the importance of the chaebol to the rapid postwar development of the Korean economy, little has been written about … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 70)
Representations of Femininity in Contemporary South Korean Women’s Literature
From the publisher’s website: This book discusses perceptions of ‘femininity’ in contemporary South Korea and the extent to which fictional representations in South Korean women’s fiction of the 1990s challenges the enduring association of the feminine with domesticity, docility and passivity. While existing literature addresses Korean women’s legal, educational, political and employment issues, this study … [Read More]
Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique
From the publisher’s website: In Reencounters, Crystal Mun-hye Baik examines what it means to live with and remember an ongoing war when its manifestations—hypervisible and deeply sensed—become everyday formations delinked from militarization. Contemplating beyond notions of inherited trauma and postmemory, Baik offers the concept of reencounters to better track the Korean War’s illegible entanglements through an interdisciplinary … [Read More]
Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship
From the publisher’s website: A provocative critique of transnational, transracial adoption from a critical race and feminist perspective and a vision for reform. Until the late twentieth century, the majority of foreign-born children adopted in the United States came from Korea. In the absorbing book Reframing Transracial Adoption, Kristi Brian investigates the power dynamics at … [Read More]
Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States
From the publisher’s website: Korean adoption and the legacies of gratitude Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two-thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families and in the process forged a new kind of transnational and transracial kinship. Kimberly D. … [Read More]
New Korean Wave Transnational Cultural Power in the Age of Social Media
From the publisher’s website: The forces that converged to unleash a pop culture tsunami The 2012 smash “Gangnam Style” by the Seoul-born rapper Psy capped the triumph of Hallyu, the Korean Wave of music, film, and other cultural forms that have become a worldwide sensation. Dal Yong Jin analyzes the social and technological trends that transformed … [Read More]
The Golden Mountain: The Autobiography of a Korean Immigrant, 1895-1960
From the publisher’s website: The classic of Asian American literature and memoir At the age of ten and without his parents, Easurk Charr, a convert to Christianity, came to Hawa’ii in 1904 to earn enough money to acquire an education and return to his native Korea as a medical missionary. The Golden Mountain is Charr’s … [Read More]
North Korean Defectors in a New and Competitive Society: Issues and Challenges in Resettlement, Adjustment, and the Learning Process
From the publisher’s website: Ongoing ideological or political conflicts in the modern world have led to appalling human rights violations against North Korean defectors who attempt to escape from their repressive country and seek freedom. Although some North Korean defectors have survived the life-threatening escape journey and arrived in free countries, their overwhelming challenges have … [Read More]
The Analects of Dasan – A Korean Syncretic Reading (five volumes)
From the publisher’s website: With extensive research and creative interpretations, Dasan’s Noneo gogeum ju (Old and New Commentaries of the Analects) has been evaluated in the academia of Korean Studies as a crystallization of his studies on the Confucian classics. Dasan (Jeong Yak-yong: 1762-1836) attempted through this book to synthesize and overcome the lengthy scholarly tradition of … [Read More]
Music in Korea: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture
From the publisher’s website: Despite its longstanding position as a distinct cultural force in East Asia, Korea continues to be underrepresented in world music texts. Music in Korea is the first brief, single-volume text to provide a thematic, succinct introduction to the music of Korea—a region whose volatile political climate has often overshadowed its rich cultural and … [Read More]
Kyongju Things: Assembling Place
From the publisher’s website: A historical ethnography of place amidst objects in the contemporary city of Kyongju, South Korea Kyongju is South Korea’s preeminent “culture city,” an urban site rich with archaeological wonders that residents compare to those of Nara, Xian, and Rome. By examining these ancient objects in relation to the controversies that engulfed … [Read More]
The Chemistry of Korean Foods and Beverages
From the publisher’s website: As people embrace new traditional cuisines, curiosity about the chemical composition follows. Korean foods and beverages have been inspired by Korea’s unique location and climate. Some Koreans believe food is medicine, and this belief promotes the use of balanced and nutritional ingredients. The most distinctive feature of Korean food is the … [Read More]
The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South Korea
From the publisher’s website: This book explains why the Korean welfare state is underdeveloped despite successful industrialization, democratization, a militant labor movement, and a centralized meritocracy. Unlike most social science books on Korea, which tend to focus on its developmental state and rapid economic development, this book deals with social welfare issues and politics during … [Read More]
Music of the Korean Renaissance: Songs and Dances of the Fifteenth Century
From the publisher’s website: Koreans of the fifteenth century recorded for posterity a large body of music which has been preserved to the present day. This book presents that music in transcription, with an introductory section providing detailed background on the music itself and on the sources, the song texts, court dances, musical instruments and … [Read More]
Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea
From the publisher’s website: Global Talent seeks to examine the utility of skilled foreigners beyond their human capital value by focusing on their social capital potential, especially their role as transnational bridges between host and home countries. Gi-Wook Shin and Joon Nak Choi build on an emerging stream of research that conceptualizes global labor mobility as … [Read More]
Contested Embrace: Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea
From the publisher’s website: Scholars have long examined the relationship between nation-states and their “internal others,” such as immigrants and ethnoracial minorities. Contested Embrace shifts the analytic focus to explore how a state relates to people it views as “external members” such as emigrants and diasporas. Specifically, Jaeeun Kim analyzes disputes over the belonging of Koreans in … [Read More]