Korea Around the Table: Food and Global Korean Identities brings together leading scholars to examine how Korean cuisine encodes identity, memory, and belonging across local and global contexts. From the early adoption of chili peppers on the Korean peninsula to the proliferation of sundubu jjigae restaurants in suburban New Jersey, this groundbreaking volume shows how … [Read More]
Booklist: Academic papers
Emotions, Affects, and Narrative in Korean History and Culture
This collection of eleven essays explores emotions and affect in Korean culture across a broad temporal span, from the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) to the present. Drawing on a diverse array of sources — including memoirs, diplomatic letters, newspapers, films, video diaries, photographs, and ethnographic interviews — the volume examines how emotions intervene in public discourse … [Read More]
Contemporary Korean Culture from the Edge: Transgression, Innovation, and Intimacy
This book is for any reader seeking to understand and engage with contemporary South Korean culture. Inspired by the term “edge”, which in Korean refers to attitudes and ideas that are new, gripping and transgressive, each chapter provides a new perspective on today’s Korea. Drawing from a range perspectives, Contemporary Korean Culture from the Edge: Transgression, Innovation, … [Read More]
Divided Korea: Understanding Unification Narratives
Divided Korea: Understanding Unification Narratives examines how different visions of Korean unification have been formed and contested across history, politics, and culture. From Cold War propaganda to digital diplomacy, or from South Korea’s democratic reforms to North Korea’s Juche ideology, the volume illustrates how unification is regarded as both hope and threat, promise and peril. … [Read More]
From Koreanness to K-ness: Contemporary Korean Culture and Society
From Koreanness to K-ness: Contemporary Korean Culture and Society aims to conceptualise ‘K-ness’ as a new way of understanding the underlying characteristics that shape the semiotic, cultural, and sociological representations of contemporary Korean culture and society. The global popularity of Korean cultural content has sparked extensive interest in various facets of the Korean language, culture, and … [Read More]
Critical Approaches to Transmedia Storytelling in K-Pop
In Critical Approaches to Transmedia Storytelling in K-Pop, contributors present a variety of compelling case studies to argue that K-pop has evolved beyond a musical genre into a global cultural phenomenon with a growing influence on contemporary media practices, highlighting its transmedia ecosystem in which complex narratives unfold and engage audiences across formats and platforms. … [Read More]
Korean Culture in the Global Age: K-Pop, K-Drama, K-Film, and K-Literature
Since the late 1990s, South Korean cultural products such as pop music, TV drama, and film have shaped the country’s image around the world. This book explores these three internationally best-known media of the Korean Wave global phenomenon, along with a less commonly featured aspect, K-literature. Iconic images of South Korea today include stylish music … [Read More]
The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea
Korea is a historical region of prominence in the global political economy. Still, a comprehensive overview of its early modern era has yet to receive a book-length treatment in English. Comprising topical chapters written by 22 experts from 11 countries, The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea presents an interdisciplinary survey of Korea’s politics, society, economy, and … [Read More]
The Bloomsbury Handbook of North Korean Cinema
This first handbook on North Korean cinema contests the assumption that North Korean film is “unwatchable,” in terms of both quality and accessibility, refusing to reduce North Korean cinema to political propaganda and focusing on its aesthetic forms and cultural meanings. Since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) has … [Read More]
Readings of the Gateless Barrier
The Gateless Barrier is one of the most cherished yet also one of the most enigmatic Chan or Zen texts of East Asian Buddhism. Compiled by the Chinese Chan master Wumen Huikai in 1228, it contains forty-eight Zen stories of spiritual awakening called “public cases” or gong’ans (known as kōans in Japanese and kongans in Korean). This book presents a new English translation … [Read More]
Korean Pop Culture beyond Asia: Race and Reception
Showcases the dynamism of cross-cultural engagement with Korean media Korean media has exploded in popularity across the globe in the past decade: BTS and other K-pop groups have packed stadiums, Parasite garnered record-breaking critical success, The Masked Singer and Single’s Inferno became viral TV hits, and multiday KCON fan events have highlighted not only media but Korean food, cosmetics, and fashion. … [Read More]
Buddhism, Digital Technology and New Media in Korea: Ŭisang’s Ocean Seal Diagram
Buddhism, Digital Technology and New Media in Korea introduces Ŭisang (625-702), a seminal figure in East Asian religion who founded the Korean Hwaŏm school of Buddhism from various angles and placing his thought in the interdisciplinary and transcultural context of the twenty-first century. The book presents and analyses the scope of Ŭisang’s teachings in Korean … [Read More]
The Korean Welfare State: Social Investment in an Aging Society
The birth and remarkable expansion of Korean social welfare policy over the last several decades has taken place amidst the socio-economic burdens of a rapidly aging society. This book surveys these developments through the analytic lens of the Social Investment State, under which contemporary policies have altered the essential character of the 20th century welfare … [Read More]
Transnationalism and Migration in Global Korea: History, Politics, and Sociology, 1910 to the Present
Contrary to the image of Korea as a largely self-contained country until its economy became global during the 1990s, this book shows that transnationalism has firmly been part of modern Korea’s national experience throughout its existence. The volume portrays Korea’s frequent transnational entanglements with other nations in East Asia and the West from the start … [Read More]
ReFocus: The Films of Yim Soon-rye
Highlights the cinematic oeuvre of Yim Soon-rye, one of the most influential Korean female filmmakers First comprehensive English-language book on Yim Soon-rye and her films, placing her within the larger perspectives of Korean cinematic history and women’s cinema First English volume on any Korean woman filmmaker, that calls for a need to address the work … [Read More]
Introducing Korean Popular Culture
This new textbook is a timely and interdisciplinary resource for students looking for an introduction to Korean popular culture, exploring the multifaceted meaning of Korean popular culture at micro and macro levels and the process of cultural production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context. Drawing on perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, … [Read More]