“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
The Politics of the Have-Nots: What South Korean Activism Teaches Us about Radical Democracy [forthcoming]
Social change requires the emergence of a collective subject that can foster solidarity within and across national boundaries. But how can such a collective come together in our current era of liberal individualism and the pursuit of maximum profit? In The Politics of the Have-Nots, Hae Yeon Choo theorizes how this collective might cohere and … [Read More]
Traveling Chinatowns: The Architecture of Migration and Violence in Colonial Korea [forthcoming]
Drawing on an impressive array of archival sources, from colonial criminal records to historical maps and exposé journalism, this book brings to light the overlooked history of ethnic Chinese enclaves in Korea during the era of Japanese colonialism. Situated within a global circuit of Chinese migration, the Japanese empire produced a structure of anti-migrant violence … [Read More]
Unruly Rites: Christianity, Ritual Politics, and the Making of Religious Difference in Modern Korea, 1884-1945 [forthcoming]
When Western missionaries first introduced Protestant Christianity to Korea in 1884, Korean converts adopted beliefs and practices that defied prevailing Confucian norms, including distinct faith-based rituals. By the turn of the twentieth century, during the final years of the Chosŏn dynasty, competing cultural and religious viewpoints started to roil Korean society with frenzied—even life-and-death—controversies over … [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]
Everything but the Bomb: South Korea’s Nuclear Hedging Strategy [forthcoming]
Amid North Korea’s advancing nuclear capabilities and the declining credibility of U.S. extended deterrence, South Korea has a strong motive to pursue its own nuclear deterrent. With its advanced nuclear energy program, South Korea possesses the means to develop nuclear weapons indigenously. However, its opportunity to do so is constrained by the prohibitive economic, security … [Read More]
ImagiNation: Deconstructing South Korea’s Modern Miracles [forthcoming]
In less than a century, South Korea has remarkably transformed its image from one of the world’s poorest nations to a center of global influence. Not just one but a series of so-called modern miracles transformed the country into an exceptional case of national image-making and image-shifting. In contrast with the utilitarian focus of much … [Read More]
Mukja: Let’s Eat!: Fan-Favorite Recipes from K-Pop, K-Dramas & More [forthcoming]
Celebrate the flavors of hallyu with more than 65 mukbang-worthy recipes inspired by Korean dramas, movies, and music. The Korean Wave, or hallyu, has seen the K-food craze spread globally, spurred by the popularity of cultural exports like K-pop and K-dramas. From dalgona coffee to cheese-filled corndogs, Korean trends are taking over, both on-screen and … [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]
Making Korea: 50 Design Stories [forthcoming]
The meteoric rise and global impact of Hallyu has made South Korea a cultural powerhouse, where pop-culture and cosmetic surgery co-exist with centuries-old shamanistic and Confucian rituals. This vibrant creative force, a potent mix of the traditional and hyper-new, informs Korean design today. Drawing on the V&A’s renowned collection, this compelling publication explores social history … [Read More]
Remedying the Body: Plastic Surgery and the Politics of Embodiment in Korea [forthcoming]
Plastic surgery has exploded in popularity around the world in the recent decades, with South Korea emerging as a leader of the global beauty economy. This book presents a cultural discourse of plastic surgery in Korea through the feminist politics of care, bringing together intersecting narratives of marginalization to reimagine coalitional ways of surviving a … [Read More]
American Hagwon [forthcoming]
Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of Pachinko, returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic that follows one family as they reckon with personal dreams and familial duty. John and Helen Koh and their three children – Bo, DH and Mido – are building new lives in Korea when they find their worlds upended, first by … [Read More]
City in a Future Tense: The Making of a Smart City in South Korea [forthcoming]
Songdo, South Korea, is one of the earliest and most ambitious smart city projects. Mythical narratives have painted it as a promised land of the future where the problems and struggles of the present have been efficiently transcended—or concealed—by technology. In City in a Future Tense, Chamee Yang interrogates these myths and traces Songdo’s story to show how it … [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]
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]
Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War [forthcoming]
Black Market Intimacies reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities involving sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and US soldiers provided the material foundations of the regional economy across Korea and Japan during the Korean War. Against the conventional view that illicit exchanges exist outside the formal economy and legal regulations, Jeongmin Kim … [Read More]