In The Promised Republic, Russell Burge offers a bold new history of South Korea’s rapid development. By focusing on the experience of rural-to-urban migrants who built and lived in Seoul’s shantytowns, Burge historicizes national development as a site of struggle with the urban poor at its center. What would a society of postcolonial abundance look like? … [Read More]
Booklist: Non-Fiction (page 3)
The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea
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]
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]
The Glosters in the Korean War
On 25 June 1950, the simmering Cold War suddenly turned hot when North Korea, backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the South. The United Nations responded rapidly, urging member states to aid South Korea, and among the nations that committed troops was the United Kingdom. One of the British units … [Read More]
Dreamt I Found You
From the critically acclaimed author of The Apology comes a contemporary retelling of Korea’s Romeo & Juliet, as the cousin of the star-crossed lovers helps them avoid a tragic fate. When Dahee Shin was nine years old, she made a promise to protect her favorite cousin, Channing, who has always been like a sister to … [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]
North Korea and South Korea: Monopolizing Nationalism in a Divided Peninsula
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]
The Art of Korean Cooking
A beautifully produced cookbook featuring eighty recipes inspired by traditional Korean cuisine, alongside illuminating essays on the country’s culinary history. The Art of Korean Cooking is a definitive introduction to Korean cuisine and a beautifully crafted cookbook. It compiles more than eighty recipes, each meticulously researched and tested by Onjium – a cultural research institute … [Read More]
Earth Works: Houses by Byoung Cho
Earth Works: Houses by Byoung Cho offers a unique glimpse into the residential buildings of one of Korea’s most influential architects. This visually stunning monograph combines photography, plans, drawings, paintings and models to provide an exclusive overview of this rarely published aspect of Byoung’s work. Focused entirely around fifteen private and rarely seen residences, the … [Read More]
Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult
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]
From Koreanness to K-ness: Contemporary Korean Culture and Society
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]
Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism
How the US military origins of global capitalism facilitated both South Korea’s “economic miracle” and the decline of US industrial might The US military has become a ubiquitous part of modern economic life. The Cold War prompted the first permanent overseas deployment of US troops and the creation of a global network of US military … [Read More]
How Korean Corn Dogs Changed My Life
An addictive, tell-all memoir about what happens when you try to make your dreams come true – as well as a love letter to Korea Aged twenty-one, fuelled by a love of K-dramas and a need to find herself, Alice Amelia moves to Seoul. She knows no one in her adopted country, doesn’t speak the … [Read More]
Korean Relations with Japan and Ryūkyū In the Early Chosŏn Period: A Translation of Sin Sukchu’s Haedong Chegukki
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
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]
American Han
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional … [Read More]