London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945

In the rich and varied life stories in Under the Black Umbrella, elderly Koreans recall incidents that illustrate the complexities of Korea during the colonial period. Hildi Kang here reinvigorates a period of Korean history long shrouded in the silence of those who endured under the “black umbrella” of Japanese colonial rule. Existing descriptions of the … [Read More]

Everything Yearned For

Publisher description: Manhae (1879-1944), or Han Yongun, was a Korean Buddhist (Son) monk during the era of Japanese colonial occupation (1910-1945). Manhae is a political and cultural hero in Korea, and his works are studied by college students and school children alike. Everything Yearned For is a collection of 88 love poems, evocative of the … [Read More]

Korea and Christianity

From the publisher’s website: More than two centuries have passed since Catholicism was introduced in Korea. Over a century has passed since the introduction of Protestantism. Membership in the Protestant denomination has grown to over ten million in that period. This volume looks into the development and the rapid rise of Christianity in Korea and … [Read More]

Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century

From the publisher’s website: Writing Women in Korea explores the connections among translation, new forms of writing, and new representations of women in Korea from the early 1900s to the late 1930s. It examines shifts in the way translators handled material pertaining to women, the work of women translators of the time, and the relationship between … [Read More]

Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience, 1900–1950

From the publisher’s website: Korea was “discovered” by the West after World War II when it became a flashpoint in the Cold War. Before the war, however, it was home to many hundreds of Westerners who experienced life there under Japanese colonial rule. These included missionaries who opened Korea as a field for evangelism, education, … [Read More]

Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919

Korea Between Empires chronicles the development of a Korean national consciousness. It focuses on two critical periods in Korean history and asks how key concepts and symbols were created and integrated into political programs to create an original Korean understanding of national identity, the nation-state, and nationalism. Looking at the often-ignored questions of representation, narrative, and … [Read More]

Colonial Modernity in Korea

From the publisher’s website: The twelve chapters in this volume seek to overcome the nationalist paradigm of Japanese repression and exploitation versus Korean resistance that has dominated the study of Korea’s colonial period (1910–1945) by adopting a more inclusive, pluralistic approach that stresses the complex relations among colonialism, modernity, and nationalism. By addressing such diverse … [Read More]

The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973

From the publisher’s website: On January 13, 1903, the first Korean immigrants arrived in Hawai’i. Numbering a little more than a hundred individuals, this group represented the initial wave of organized Korean immigration to Hawai’i. Over the next two and a half years, nearly 7,500 Koreans would make the long journey eastward across the Pacific. … [Read More]

Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea: The Onoda Cement Factory

From the publisher’s website: This book is a study of labor relations and the first generation of skilled workers in colonial Korea, a subject crucial to the understanding of modernization in twentieth-century Korea. Born in rural Korea, these workers confronted both the colonial experience and the modern workplace as they interacted with Japanese managers and … [Read More]

A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction

A Ready Made Life is the first volume of early modern Korean fiction to appear in English in the U.S. Written between 1921 and 1943, the sixteen stories are an excellent introduction to the riches of modern Korean fiction. They reveal a variety of settings, voices, styles, and thematic concerns, and the best of them, … [Read More]

A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim Songsu, 1891–1955

From the publisher’s website: During the period of Japanese domination, Kim Songsu emerged as one of Korea’s leading cultural nationalists. This life history details his contribution to the self-strengthening programs moderate nationalists advocated as the foundation for Korea’s independence. “Choong Soon Kim’s well-written book weaves a history of Korean capitalism and a history of an … [Read More]

Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea

The period from 1876 to 1946 in Korea marked a turbulent time when the country opened its market to foreign powers, became subject to Japanese colonialism, and was swept into agricultural commercialization, industrialization, and eventually postcolonial revolutionary movements. Gi-Wook Shin examines how peasants responded to these events, and to their own economic and political circumstances, … [Read More]

The Clan Records

Publisher’s description: Although little known in the West, Kajiyama Toshiyuki was one of Japan’s most prolific and popular writers. Celebrated for his crisp, fast-paced style and incisive analysis, Kajiyama’s popularity may be attributed to his finely tuned sense of what many Japanese felt but could not articulate: the feeling of irreplaceable loss that lay beneath … [Read More]

True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women

From the back cover: Between 100,000 and 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military between the early 1930s and 1945. Yet successive post-war Japanese governments have refused to acknowledge what took place and no reparations have been made to the mainly Korean victims. The international community, in awe of Japan’s economic … [Read More]

The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910

What forces were behind Japan’s emergence as the first non-Western colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century? Peter Duus brings a new perspective to Meiji expansionism in this pathbreaking study of Japan’s acquisition of Korea, the largest of its colonial possessions. He shows how Japan’s drive for empire was part of a larger … [Read More]

Peace Under Heaven

Originally published in Seoul in 1938, soon after the outbreak of the Pacific War, “Peace Under Heaven” is a satirical novel centering on the household of a Korean landlord during the Japanese colonial occupation. Master Yun, embodying the traditional ambitions of a standard Korean paterfamilias, by being projected fast forward into a modern urban environment, … [Read More]