“I’m delighted to be able to introduce my book to fellow plant parents across the anglophone world. In 2025, we need the wisdom of each and every individual in our communities, now more than ever. During this time, I hope that the stories of plants – their concentrated wisdom unfolding according to the laws of … [Read More]
Booklist: Non-Fiction
Profits of Queerness: Media, Medicine, and Citizenship in Authoritarian South Korea, 1950–1980 [forthcoming]
This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study reassesses South Korea’s tumultuous period of authoritarian development (1950–1980) through obfuscated but illuminating histories of “queerness,” defined as gender variance, same-sex sexuality, and atypical anatomies, among other nonnormative expressions. Rather than primarily view these topics through minoritarian and/or liberal lenses, Todd Henry adopts a universalizing approach to examine how social conformity … [Read More]
The Forest Called You [forthcoming]
In a future Korea, the world has been ravaged by dust clouds and the deadly Akanta virus. Rather than live in their nightmarish present, people slip on virtual reality headsets to indulge in nostalgic simulations of the past. 18-year-old Soop – stigmatised due to her brush with Akanta, which causes VR-rejection – is bullied at … [Read More]
The Promised Republic: Developmental Society and the Making of Modern Seoul, 1961-1979 [forthcoming]
Synopsis not yet available. The title is based on the author’s PhD dissertation, “The Promised Republic: Developmental Society and the Making of Modern Seoul,” which examines urbanization and social change in 1960s and 1970s South Korea. Russell Burge is Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of modern Korean history in the department of East Asian Languages and … [Read More]
Privileged but Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness [forthcoming]
A compelling examination of North Korea’s elites, their hidden discontent, and the role they may play in shaping the regime’s future Jieun Baek’s second book on North Korea is a deeply researched and sharply analytical account of the grievances harbored by the country’s elite. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with escapees from … [Read More]
Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts [forthcoming]
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 [forthcoming]
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]
North Korea and South Korea: Monopolizing Nationalism in a Divided Peninsula [forthcoming]
The autocratic regimes in both North Korea and South Korea attempted to legitimize their rule through efforts in nation-building but achieved different results. North Korea and South Korea: Monopolizing Nationalism in a Divided Peninsula seeks to answer: How did these regimes’ nation-building strategies through a variety of tools and venues differ in the process of regime development? … [Read More]
Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult [forthcoming]
A landmark history of North Korea, told through the rise of the Kim dynasty and its surprising ties to American Christianity—a spectacular, penetrating account of a world like no other North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom. For nearly eight decades, it has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking off its Soviet and Chinese sponsors to … [Read More]
The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea [forthcoming]
Emerging as multifaceted cultural activism, the minjung (people’s) art movement defined the aesthetics of the pro-democracy movements in the 1970s and 1980s in South Korea. Tracing minjung art’s history and legacy, Sohl Lee explores how artists associated with the movement mobilized images, print, and performance to build movement publics and reimagine sovereignty. Hundreds of artists questioned the … [Read More]
From Koreanness to K-ness: Contemporary Korean Culture and Society [forthcoming]
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]
Korean Relations with Japan and Ryūkyū In the Early Chosŏn Period: A Translation of Sin Sukchu’s Haedong Chegukki [forthcoming]
Between 1392 and 1592 — a period bounded by Japanese pirate raids along the Korean coast and Japan’s invasion of Chosŏn Korea — more than 4,600 Japanese trade missions were recorded by the Chosŏn government. In response to these missions, the famous official Sin Sukchu compiled regulations, detailed information about Japanese contacts, and other material, … [Read More]
A Nation Within: North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan [forthcoming]
The presence of hundreds of thousands ethnic Koreans in Japan, or “zainichi Koreans,” is one of the visible legacies of Japanese colonialism. A surprising and influential group among zainichi Koreans that persists to this day is Chongryon, the only pro–North Korean diasporic group based in a capitalist society. Chongryon historically represented the central grassroots force … [Read More]
The Cultural Diplomacy of South Korea: Exhibiting the Nation in International Museums [forthcoming]
This book explores the role played by museums and museum exhibitions in South Korea’s cultural diplomacy and international projection of itself to the world. Based on extensive archival research and fieldwork in cultural diplomatic institutions across South Korea, Britain and the United States, this book charts the important role played by this form of cultural … [Read More]
Light and Thread [forthcoming]
In this light-filled and multi-faceted book, her first since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang draws together the threads of her work and life, tracing the connections between her interior and exterior worlds through a sequence of essays, poems, photographs and diaries. A book of reflections, of words and light, it has … [Read More]
K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today [forthcoming]
K-Pop Fandom insists that K-pop fan practices and activities constitute a central productive force, shaping not only K-pop’s explosive global popularity, but also K-pop’s cultural impacts, politics, and horizons of possibility. Over the past three decades, the K-pop fandom and its activities have expanded, intensified, and diversified along myriad dimensions, assuming novel social, technological, and economic … [Read More]