Booklist: books published in last 12 months

Divided Korea: Understanding Unification Narratives examines how different visions of Korean unification have been formed and contested across history, politics, and culture. From Cold War propaganda to digital diplomacy, or from South Korea’s democratic reforms to North Korea’s Juche ideology, the volume illustrates how unification is regarded as both hope and threat, promise and peril. ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Detective Yi Chang needs another miracle. Ten years ago his sister was healed of her deadly cancer by a mysterious cult leader, but now his young niece has inherited the same disease. The only lead Yi Chang has is the body of a murder victim found in an abandoned building in the Korean seaside. The ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

From the New York Times-bestselling author of A Crane Among Wolves comes a warm and romantic homage to Jane Austen set in historical Korea, about a reader and a writer who secretly fight against government book banning and find themselves irresistibly drawn together. As the dutiful second daughter of a poor family, Haewon is expected ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

A romantic thriller exploring the dark corners of human desire and isolation with quiet eeriness Is a fresh start truly possible? Or will society’s strictures and your own impulses keep re-creating the same messed-up relationships in every narrow room you enter? Choi Seongmin’s Narrow Rooms follows a young woman who leaves her rural hometown to study in ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

From Korean science fiction author Kim Cho-yeop, a stunning and poignant collection of literary speculative fiction stories that explore the complexities of identity, love, death, and the search for life’s meaning, perfect for fans of Exhalation and The Paper Menagerie. In If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, Korean science fiction superstar Kim ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Junyoung and Dahye are colleagues; he has a taste for voyeurism and she a hunger for revenge. Molka (n): the Korean term for spy cameras secretly and illegally installed, often to capture voyeuristic images and videos. Dahye has met the man of her dreams – Hyukjoon, who happens to be the heir to a multi-billion ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

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] (Link to online store)

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] (Link to online store)

Spanning the 20th century, Honey in the Wound follows a mysteriously gifted lineage of Korean women as they are displaced across Asia by Japanese imperialism. At this novel’s heart is Young-Ja, whose family is killed by Japanese soldiers. Her magical gift – the ability to infuse her cooking with her feelings: love, peace, delight – ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

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] (Link to online store)

From the legendary avant-garde poet Kim Hyesoon, a landmark collection documenting her first and only work of digital performance art to date. “Poetry in Korea has been a vaunted form — and traditionally left to men. Kim broke away from the masculine styles that came before her… Kim has pursued a vernacular that’s intensely Korean ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

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] (Link to online store)

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] (Link to online store)

A briskly written primer on the North Korean decisions, foreign interventions and accidents of fate which have both threatened and, ultimately, preserved the country’s dictatorship. This nimble tour through North Korea’s history revisits sixteen knife-edge moments when collapse, reform or war nearly shattered the Kim dynasty. Structured in four acts—from the peninsula’s partition in 1945 ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

A tale of star-crossed lovers, political intrigue and mysticism inspired by Korean mythology and set in the Joseon dynasty. ‘Whether I remember or not, it seems I am destined to love you.’ Lady Seomun Bin has a secret: she is a cross-dressing byeoksa, or ghost-stalker. Born with the unenviable ability to see spirits, she is ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

What Does the North Korean System Look Like from the Inside? Han Jin-myung served for years within the North Korean state apparatus before leaving the regime in January 2015. Although more than a decade has passed since his departure, the fundamental structures of power in Pyongyang remain largely unchanged. His testimony therefore offers a rare ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

The night the baby without a surname was born, the army rolled into his mother’s town Incheon, South Korea, 1985. The country is revolting against a dictatorship, but in the local boarding-house, the chaos inside is only just beginning. When Hana is pulled from school to work in her family’s minbak, all she wants is ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Providing a rare example of a national cinema that has managed to overturn the prevailing global paradigm of Hollywood dominance, South Korean films are nevertheless still haunted by the peninsula’s earlier colonial history. Focussing on a series of films produced during the administration of disgraced and then pardoned President Park Geun-hye (2013–2017), this book examines ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

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] (Link to online store)

What does real happiness look like? How can we find true purpose, meaning and connection in our finite time on Earth? 105-year-old Professor Kim reveals key aspects of ancient Korean philosophy and shares stories from over a century of living to help us live better. Showing us how to lean into the world with more ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

North Korea is perhaps the most intriguing, infamous and enigmatic nation of our modern world. Yet how many of us know its full history, and how it came to be? How can we understand such a strange, isolated state? This new edition seeks to provide some answers to these questions. Starting with its origins in the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

In this moving exploration of dual identities reminiscent of Past Lives, a Korean writer’s pregnancy raises questions about her own childhood abandonment. Nana, a Korean playwright, was adopted as a child by a French couple. Before she was Nana, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Lyrical Translation is a literary history of modern Korean poetry’s origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded it as an ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

At some point between living alone and becoming single, Hwang Sunwoo and Kim Hana found each other, and decided to live together in a nice apartment where their four cats would finally have the freedom to run around. Together they became a family – and redefined it. At a time housing costs have skyrocketed whilst ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

In Critical Approaches to Transmedia Storytelling in K-Pop, contributors present a variety of compelling case studies to argue that K-pop has evolved beyond a musical genre into a global cultural phenomenon with a growing influence on contemporary media practices, highlighting its transmedia ecosystem in which complex narratives unfold and engage audiences across formats and platforms. ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

In this major new interpretation of Sino-North Korean relations, Gregg A. Brazinsky argues that neither the PRC nor the DPRK would have survived as socialist states without the ideal of Sino-North Korean friendship. Chinese and North Korean leaders encouraged mutual empathy and sentimental attachments between their citizens and then used these emotions to strengthen popular ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

This volume is the first annotated translation in any language of the “Chojang chungga-ŭi” (The Meaning of the “Middle” and the “Provisional” in the “First Stanza”), a little-known text that yielded considerable influence on early East Asian Buddhism. It corresponds to the first chapter of the Taesŭng saron hyŏnŭi ki (Notes on the Four Treatises[, belonging to ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

In December 2024, South Korean president Yoon Seok-yeol stunned the world by declaring martial law. More puzzling was that Yoon’s insurrection unexpectedly gained substantial support from the ruling right-wing party and many citizens. Why do ordinary citizens support authoritarian leaders and martial law in a democratic country? What draws them to extreme actions and ideas? ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

With the release of Parasite (2019), recipient of the Palme d’Or and an Academy Award for Best Picture, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho secured his place as one of his generation’s leading filmmakers. Yet while scholars and critics have long appreciated his penetrating critique of Korean society and global capitalism, his oeuvre has not ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

From Korea to Britain, from loss to hope, from hardship to grace — a father’s intimate letter-memoir to his daughter. When Bon Jeon left Korea with nothing but a suitcase, a dream, and the quiet weight of responsibility, he never imagined how deeply the journey would reshape him — as a husband, a teacher, a ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

One of the most famous poets in Korea, Kim Yeong-nang spent most of his life in Gangjin county, Jeolla province, in the southern part of Korea. He wrote 86 poems and published 2 books in his lifetime. Though he was a noted performer of traditional Korean music he also loved classical Western music and was ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

This book is an English collection of twenty poems translated from Jeong Hyun-woo’s 검은 기적. In this volume, the poet traces the world of lingering light and shifting forms as he passes through the absence of his beloved mother, remembering from the lowest and most enduring place of the heart. Memories bound to the body-like ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

The Courage to Die is the powerful true story of Eunhee Park, the child of divorced parents and a mother lost to mental illness, who endured years of hunger and indoctrination in a North Korean orphanage where survival meant silence. Raised by her disabled grandfather and strong-willed grandmother, Eunhee faced abandonment, loss, and the rigid control of ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

When twenty-seven-year-old Yeon-hwa loses her grandmother, enigmatic proprietor of the Hwawoldang, she decides to respect her wishes by keeping the store going for at least a month, between the hours of 10pm and midnight. She has never learnt to make the traditional desserts herself, and hopes to learn more about her grandmother. On her very ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

What if you could turn the pages of your own life, like the pages of your favourite book? Somewhere along the ordinary alleys you pass by every day, a mysterious shop appears between all the other familiar buildings. Surely, you didn’t see it yesterday or the day before. A large sign reads ‘The Moon Glow ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Vestiges of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea (Samguk yusa) is the first annotated English translation of one of the most important premodern Korean historical texts. One of only two surviving works on the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668) and Greater Silla (668–936), the Samguk yusa is a rich collection of historical, supernatural, and mythical stories, including one of ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

For readers who revelled in the toxic obsession of Butter and the addictive horror of Bat Eater Dear Jiwon, I’m writing to you regarding the murder of your son… Revenge is perhaps best served by letter. But letters get answered. And when a young tutor takes up the pen to write to her former employer ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Nothing can stop the Empire’s insatiable conquest. Not gods, not dragons, not armies. But heroes still rise. The Empire continues to enforce its so-called peace with massive war machines that destroy anything that opposes their might. Though the conquered are wholly at the mercy of the Empire, desperate odds such as these can be fertile ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

This book examines the evolution of the Korean film industry, presenting a comprehensive account from the early days of experimental screening to its current period of attracting increased foreign investment. Exploring the Korean film industry’s troubled past, this book covers occupation, civil war, authoritarianism, globalisation, and the continued uncertainties amidst geopolitical competition. It differs from ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Island Ablaze and Other Stories is an anthology of thirteen stories—eleven from South Korea and two from North Korea—about their complicated relationships with their most important ally and enemy: the United States. Set in times ranging from colonial Korea to the new millennium, these stories offer a look into the many ways that the US empire shapes ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

An elderly Korean woman talking about being forced into sexual slavery during World War II. A modern Korean woman extricating herself from a failing relationship with an artist. Award-winning South Korean writer Kim Soom presents us with portraits of two women who couldn’t be more different but who both show resilience and compassion. No Hand Held ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Winner of the 2018 Hankyoreh Literature Award  This work is a fictional account of real-life labour activist, Kang Juryong, who led a strike at the Pyongwon rubber factory in 1930s Pyongyang to protest working conditions. Set against the backdrop of Japanese-occupied Korea, Capitalists Must Starve follows a sharp-tongued, big-hearted heroine who dares to love, rebel, ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Welcome to Soyangri Book Kitchen In a peaceful village in the countryside, far from the bustling heart of Seoul, lies a book lovers’ paradise. With its wafts of delicious food and book-filled shelves, Soyangri Book Kitchen is dotingly managed by its plucky proprietor Yoojin. Her aim? To create a sanctuary for weary souls like herself. ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

University student Wonjun visits his friend Jingu’s basement apartment, only to find unsettling changes that are somehow tied to a K-pop star’s suicide. Jingu behaves coldly, a strange statue looms in the corner, and reality begins to fracture. Blurring the lines between hallucination and nightmare, this graphic novel by JaeHoon Choi explores guilt and despair ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Queer Throughlines draws on years of direct participation, interviews, and ethnography to examine transnational Korean LGBTQ+ activism since the 1990s. Han maps the sites and routes of leftist and queer political movements, highlighting challenges posed by Christian conservatives in both South Korea and the US. The book uses the concept of “throughlines” to weave together ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Korea has an unusually diverse religious culture. In the north, Juche, which has taken on religious overtones, monopolizes articulations of beliefs and values as well as ritual practice. In the south, no single religion dominates, with over half saying that they have no specific religious affiliation. The remainder report being Protestant, Buddhist, and Catholic. Smaller ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

The book uncovers the untold stories of Korean women performers who navigated successive waves of conflict as cultural laborers in military entertainment, offering insight into the intersection of war, gender, and culture in East Asia. Imperial Entertainers: Korean Women Performers from Military to Global Stages, 1937-1975 uncovers the untold stories of Korean women performers who navigated ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

A charming ode to the lost art of connecting through the handwritten letter, from the owner of the beloved Seoul stationery shop Geulwoll Juhee Moon once doubted whether handwritten letters had a place in our ultra-fast-paced world, but the runaway success of her stationery shop Geulwoll, established in 2019, quickly became known as a tranquil ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Drinking is an essential part of Korean culture, one that’s guided by a complex web of unspoken rules, deep tradition, and lots and lots of food. With Soju Party, food writer, chef, and co-owner of Brooklyn’s Orion Bar Irene Yoo has written the book on drinking like a Korean. She introduces the classic Korean alcohols and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

In Brutal Fantasies, Christine Kim examines how Western cultural representations of North Korea depend on fantasies of the inhuman. Drawing on films, fiction, and defectors’ life writings from the last two decades, Kim analyzes how these representations construct North Korea as a site of brutality and inhumanity. She recasts these stories through Asian American and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

The upwardly mobile Kim family employs a young woman to help manage their new house. Mr. Kim begins an affair with the nameless ‘housemaid’, who soon drags the entire family into a terrible tragedy… The director Kim Ki-young played a formative part in South Korean cinema’s “Golden Age” of the 1960s and 1970s; his 1960 ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

And the River Drags Her Down is a haunting, lyrical tale of grief, sisterhood and revenge that blends Gothic horror, mystery and Korean folklore, perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting, House of Hollow and CG Drews. ‘This unsettling, poetic YA horror is full of fury, grief, love and hard-won acceptance.’ Guardian Soojin has ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

The 1970s and 1980s were pivotal decades in South Korea, marked by rapid industrialization and urbanization. The language of sacrifice was constantly employed by the developmental state to justify its exploitation of workers and violation of countless civil rights as necessary for the nation’s economic growth and security. As a counter to this prevailing rhetoric, ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

1966 And All That: The Story of North Korea’s Greatest Football Team is a captivating and meticulously researched exploration of one of football’s most unexpected and legendary World Cup stories. In this unique work, Kenneth Knight brings to life the incredible rise of the North Korean team that stunned the world in 1966, not merely ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Cultural Production of Hallyu in the Digital Platform Era explores how histories, industry structures, and politics interact in the platformization of the Korean Wave. Dal Yong Jin argues that while much research centers on the Korean culture takeover and the dominance of Korean products on premier global media platforms, Korean cultural industries also experience reshaping and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

An effervescent speculative short story collection by South Korean author Amil for the next generation who crave a fresh perspective. With strong roots in feminist science fiction and fantasy, Roadkill is for the next generation of readers of speculative fiction who love to be transported to different worlds but also crave a fresh perspective. Featuring ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Where is the line? Was there ever a line? Between time-between space-between circumstance. This dreamlike theme reverberates throughout ZERO. ZERO Four Modern Plays is a collection of four plays by Playwright Sue Ja Joo. Each of these searingly brilliant plays form an integrated structure, each with its own message. Night Picture of Rain Sound, bridges ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Have you ever been on a summer holiday so good you never want to go home again? Jebi is tired of noisy, crowded Seoul and her dull job at a photography studio in the city. When she sees a billboard on her commute showing beautiful Jeju Island, she decides to quit her job and spend ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

Starving ghosts, anguished farmers, and grieving mothers. Floating heads, gaunt bodies, and masses of bodily fluids. Such are the visceral sensations, exaggerated affects, and suffering subjects that characterized leftist Korean cultural production in the 1920s and 1930s. In popular fiction, print cartoons, reportage, and other emergent forms of mass culture, scenes detailing the spectacular bodily ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

For readers of Han Kang and Sheila Heti, an atmospheric, melancholic novel about a successful sculptor who decides to commit suicide by artfully preparing and deliberately eating a lethal dish of blowfish. Blowfish is a postmodern novel in four parts, alternating between the respective stories of a female sculptor and a male architect. Death is ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

The astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of the twentieth century, ranging from post-war Japan to suburban America and the North Korean regime One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

A woman sees her man murdered on the street – and time stands still. Until she cradles his corpse to her chest and carries it home, where she disinfects every inch of skin before seating herself to begin. What happens next reverberates from this realm into the next, where the man is witnessing his own ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

In this million-copy international bestseller from Korea, the owner of a corner store takes in an unhoused man who does a good deed, a kind soul whose presence will transform the whole neighborhood—a heartwarming tale of community and redemption reminiscent of the bestselling novels of Matt Haig and Gabrielle Zevin. Dok-go lives in Seoul Station. ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

A collection of short stories flirting with the surreal and Kafkaesque: a father whose ashes turn into a chatting plant, a boyfriend whose hand becomes a broccoli, a group of investigative aliens fascinated by idol culture. Yuri’s world is permeated with humour, emotions, and style, giving us a refreshing perspective into the complexities of human ... [Read More] (Link to online store)

“This summer vacation is not a complete failure quite yet – there’s still a lot left we can ruin.” The debut collection of genre-defying short stories from the Korean Literature and Society’s New Writer Award. Seven diversely wild and gripping stories – dreamy, dark, lyrical and wry – that expose the oddness of how we ... [Read More] (Link to online store)