London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions

There is a tendency to think of Korean American literature—and Asian American literature writ large—as a field of study involving only two spaces, the United States and Korea, with the same being true in Asian studies of Korean Japanese (Zainichi) literature involving only Japan and Korea. This book posits that both fields have to account … [Read More]

Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire: Fragmenting History

Analysing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology of “good wives, wise mothers” in support of male empire-building. Although many feminist critics have articulated women’s active roles as dutiful collaborators for the Japanese empire, male-dominated narratives of empire-building … [Read More]

Korean Wild Geese Families: Gender, Family, Social, and Legal Dynamics of Middle-Class Asian Transnational Families in North America

From the publisher’s website: Korean Wild Geese Families: Gender, Family, Social, and Legal Dynamics of Middle-Class Asian Transnational Families in North America explores the experiences of middle-class Korean transnational families, whose mothers and children migrate abroad for children’s education while fathers remain in Korea and economically support their families, throughout transnational separation: before separation, during separation, … [Read More]

Tastes Like War

A Korean American daughter’s exploration of food and family history, in order to understand her mother’s schizophrenia. Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where … [Read More]

Pachappa Camp: The First Koreatown in the United States

Through new research and materials, Edward T. Chang proves in Pachappa Camp: The First Koreatown in the United States that Dosan Ahn Chang Ho established the first Koreatown in Riverside, California in early 1905. Chang reveals the story of Pachappa Camp and its roots in the diasporic Korean community’s independence movement efforts for their homeland during the … [Read More]

Yolk

From New York Times bestselling author Mary H.K. Choi comes a funny and emotional story about two estranged sisters and how far they’ll go to save one of their lives – even if it means swapping identities. Jayne and June Baek are nothing alike. June’s three years older, a classic first-born, know-it-all narc with a problematic finance … [Read More]

Korean Digital Diaspora: Transnational Social Movements and Diaspora Identity

From the publisher’s website: Through a critical examination of the Korean diaspora in transnational contexts as a case study, Korean Digital Diaspora: Transnational Social Movements and Diaspora Identity unmasks the process of how people of the diaspora have built social interactions and communication with others online, how they have orchestrated social movements, and finally, how they have … [Read More]

Voices of the Korean Minority in Postwar Japan: Histories Against the Grain

From the publisher’s website: Shedding new light on how the histories of zainichi Koreans have been written, consumed, and discussed, this book addresses the roots of postwar debates concerning the wartime experiences of Koreans in Japan. Providing an overview of the complicated historiography, it explores the experiences of Koreans located at Ground Zero in Hiroshima and … [Read More]

Koreatowns: Exploring the Economics, Politics, and Identities of Korean Spatial Formation

This collection defines Koreatowns as spatial configurations that concentrate elements of “Korea” demographically, economically, politically, and culturally. The contributors provide exploratory accounts and critical evaluations of Koreatowns in different countries throughout the world. Ranging from familiar settings such as Los Angeles and New York City, to more unfamiliar locales such as Singapore, Beijing, Mexico, U.S.-Mexico … [Read More]

Korean International Students and the Making of Racialized Transnational Elites

By examining privileged and highly skilled Asian migrants, such as international students who acquire legal permanent residency in the United States, this book registers and traces these transnational figures as racialized transnational elites and illuminates the intersectionality and reconfiguration of race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. Using in-depth interviews with Korean international students in New York … [Read More]

The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir

From the publisher’s website: The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned … [Read More]

Korean Diaspora across the World: Homeland in History, Memory, Imagination, Media, and Reality

From the publisher’s website: This edited volume analyzes the Korean diaspora across the world and traces the meaning and the performance of homeland. The contributors explore different types of discourses among Korean diaspora across the world, such as personal/familial narratives, oral/life histories, public discourses, and media discourses. They also examine the notion of “space” to … [Read More]

Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America

From the publisher’s website: Mary Paik Lee left her native country in 1905, traveling with her parents as a political refugee after Japan imposed control over Korea. Her father worked in the sugar plantations of Hawaii briefly before taking his family to California. They shared the poverty-stricken existence endured by thousands of Asian immigrants in … [Read More]

East Goes West

From the publisher’s website: Foreword by Alexander Chee | Afterword by Sunyoung Lee | Notes by Sunyoung Lee Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming promise of the United States with nothing but four dollars and a suitcase full of Shakespeare to his name, the young, idealistic Chungpa Han arrives in a New York teeming … [Read More]

Sovereignty Experiments: Korean Migrants and the Building of Borders in Northeast Asia, 1860–1945

From the publisher’s website: Sovereignty Experiments tells the story of how authorities in Korea, Russia, China, and Japan—through diplomatic negotiations, border regulations, legal categorization of subjects and aliens, and cultural policies—competed to control Korean migrants as they suddenly moved abroad by the thousands in the late nineteenth century. Alyssa M. Park argues that Korean migrants were … [Read More]

Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption: Embodiment and Emotion

From the publisher’s website: This book investigates the experiences of South Koreans adopted into Western families and the complexity of what it means to “feel identity” beyond what is written in official adoption files. Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption is based on ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea and interviews with adult Korean adoptees from the United … [Read More]