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: Collections and Anthologies
Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts
This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to Korean Buddhism through twenty-five key primary texts spanning the seventh to twenty-first centuries. All have been expertly translated by leading scholars in the field. The volume introduction provides an overview of major themes that illuminates the diverse sources that follow. The texts, each prefaced by a brief … [Read More]
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]
Snapshots and Soundbites of Korean Culture
Snapshots and Soundbites of Korean Culture takes a novel approach to understanding Korea’s past and present by blending sounds, imagery, texts, and online and printed materials to provide a multisensory, multimodal experience of Korean culture. Each entry showcases vitally important people, objects, places, events, and institutions that help us conceptualise Korean history, society, and culture. The … [Read More]
Contemporary Korean Music in Context: Bridging Tradition, Modernity, and the Global Stage
This book encloses an interdisciplinary examination of Korean music’s evolution, contextual interactions, and global positioning from historical, sociocultural, and aesthetic perspectives. It brings together various scholarly contributions to analyse Korean music’s transformations, innovations, and cultural suggestions, with a focus on its historical roots and contemporary manifestations. This book captures the multifaceted dynamics in Korean music, … [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]
Island Ablaze and Other Stories
Island Ablaze and Other Stories is an anthology of thirteen stories—eleven from South Korea and two from North Korea—about their complicated relationships with their most important ally and enemy: the United States. Set in times ranging from colonial Korea to the new millennium, these stories offer a look into the many ways that the US empire shapes … [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]
Hidden Heroes: Anthology of North Korean Fiction
Hidden Heroes is a collection of short stories from the 1980s to present that unveil the lives of ordinary North Koreans. Through themes of identity, community, and power, it reveals a complex society, offering readers a nuanced understanding beyond prevailing stereotypes Hidden Heroes offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North … [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]
International Aid and South Korea: Experience from Recipient to Donor
This book explores South Korea’s experience as an aid recipient, as an aid donor, and as an inter‑Korea aid provider. Analysing case studies of international aid both received and dispensed by South Korea, from the end of the Korean War until the present day, this collection provides a novel lens through which to explore South … [Read More]