Acclaimed writer Kim Keum Hee invites readers into her sun-soaked Seoul apartment, where the daily ritual of nurturing her many houseplants becomes a moving meditation on resilience, hope, and the evolving seasons of a life. “Where there are roots, there is hope.” Kim Keum Hee is a self-confessed and proud ‘plant parent’. She lives with … [Read More]
Booklist: Formats and Genres
When We Look at Each Other [forthcoming]
An ode to the realities of aging, this is an honest but tender look at the challenges of caring for a relative with dementia, of how our role within the family unit evolves, and a celebration of spending precious time with those we love. Written in warm and reflective prose, it explores the author’s relationship … [Read More]
So What If I Love My Single Life [forthcoming]
So What If I Love My Single Life by YouTuber Seen Aromi, who has captivated 400,000 readers, covers everything you need to live alone successfully. If you want to live a fulfilling day all by yourself, this book is a must-read. When you say you want to live alone, you often hear nagging from people … [Read More]
Korea Around the Table: Food and Global Korean Identities [forthcoming]
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]
Ramen Makes us Complete [forthcoming]
In this world, there are two types of food: ramen and non-ramen. Yoon Ina takes ramen seriously. She makes sure to try new flavours as soon as they come out, always has enough packets stocked in the pantry, has developed her own principles and theories for making good ramen, and even keeps up to date … [Read More]
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]
Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip
Yi Kyubo (1168–1241) was the foremost writer and poet of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated is a miscellany of work from his Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip, a collection containing more than two thousand texts and considered the earliest substantial oeuvre of a Koryŏ writer to date. The present work comprises translations … [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]
Swell
Each story in Swell launches from the common but pivotal moments that determine the course of everyday life, but they’re often filtered through the perspective of someone else: documentarians, novelists, storytellers, gossips. Then, as the stories build atop one another and intertwine, they begin to shift and destabilize. Characters return but their histories are changed, alternate timelines … [Read More]
The Psychology of Luck: Korean Secrets for Attracting Wealth and Success
Praised as a book that ‘brings you luck the moment you open it’, this book contains lessons on how to understand – and use – the psychology of luck. Why are successful people so obsessed with luck? Because they want to draw things of value to them. The average person will experience at least a … [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]
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light
From Korean science fiction author Kim Cho-yeop, a stunning and poignant collection of literary speculative fiction stories that explore the complexities of identity, love, death, and the search for life’s meaning, perfect for fans of Exhalation and The Paper Menagerie. In If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, Korean science fiction superstar Kim … [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]
Lady No
From the legendary avant-garde poet Kim Hyesoon, a landmark collection documenting her first and only work of digital performance art to date. “Poetry in Korea has been a vaunted form — and traditionally left to men. Kim broke away from the masculine styles that came before her… Kim has pursued a vernacular that’s intensely Korean … [Read More]