Here is a list of titles published in 2019 that we’ve been tracking and even hoping to read: literature in translation, Korea-related fiction and poetry in English, plus notable non-fiction titles.
Sorted by date of publication, most recent first.
| Book | Cover image |
Invincible and Righteous Outlaw: The Korean Hero Hong Gildong in Literature, History, and Culture One of the most important and popular premodern Korean novels, The Story of Hong Gildong is a fast-paced adventure story about the illegitimate son of a nobleman who becomes the leader of a band of honest outlaws who take from the rich and punish the corrupt. Despite the importance of the work to Korean culture […] (Link to online store) | |
Autobiography of Death From the publisher’s website: The title section of Kim Hyesoon’s powerful new book, Autobiography of Death, consists of forty-nine poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The poems not only give voice to those who met unjust deaths during Korea’s violent contemporary […] (Link to online store) | |
A Place to Live: A New Translation of Yi Chung-hwan’s T’aengniji, the Korean Classic for Choosing Settlements From the publisher’s website: A Place to Live brings together in a single volume an introduction to Yi Chung-hwan’s (1690–1756) T’aengniji (Treatise on Choosing Settlement)—one of the most widely read and influential of the Korean classics—and an annotated translation of the text, including the author’s postscript. Yi composed the T’aengniji in the 1750s, a time when, despite King Yŏngjo’s (r. […] (Link to online store) | |
A Genealogy of Dissent: The Progeny of Fallen Royals in Chosŏn Korea From the publisher’s website: In early modern Korea, the Chosŏn state conducted an extermination campaign against the Kaesŏng Wang, descendants of the preceding Koryŏ dynasty. It was so thorough that most of today’s descendants are related to a single survivor. Before long, however, the Chosŏn dynasty sought to bolster its legitimacy as the successor of […] (Link to online store) | |
The Korean Diaspora: A Sourcebook From the preface: This book is a collection of articles and other original content on the history and current state of the Korean diaspora. It is designed to provide useful information and references to researchers and readers with interests in the Korean diaspora as a phenomenon of migration and settlement of Koreans abroad. The Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
Pop City: Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place From the publisher’s website: Pop City examines the use of Korean television dramas and K-pop music to promote urban and rural places in South Korea. Building on the phenomenon of Korean pop culture, Youjeong Oh argues that pop culture–featured place selling mediates two separate domains: political decentralization and the globalization of Korean popular culture. By analyzing the […] (Link to online store) | |
Was that Mountain Really There? From the publisher’s website: Was that Mountain Really there? by Park Wan-Suh, an award winning and well-known Korean novelist, has recently been translated by Hannah Kim and published by Kitaab. The novel depicts the trauma of partition faced by civilians in a war that reft Korea in two. Was that Mountain Really There? portrays the […] (Link to online store) | |
Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets: The Culture of Objects in Late Chosŏn Korean Art From the publisher’s website: The social and economic rise of the chungin class (“middle people” who ranked between the yangban aristocracy and commoners) during the late Chosŏn period (1700–1910) ushered in a world of materialism and commodification of painting and other art objects. Generally overlooked in art history, the chungin contributed to a flourishing art […] (Link to online store) | |
Zainichi Literature From the publisher’s website: This collection of translated works highlights a selection of writings in translation by Zainichi (diasporic Koreans in Japan). The introduction provides an historical overview of Zainichi diasporic identity; the concluding appendix considers the figure of Kin Kakuei and the flourishing Zainichi literature in the 1960s. Authors whose works are translated and […] (Link to online store) | |
The Scriptures of Won Buddhism: A Translation of Wonbulgyo kyojon with Introduction From the publisher’s website: “Professor Chung has drawn on all the tools in his scholarly arsenal to convey the flavor and meaning of the original Korean texts. Written vernacular Korean was still very much a work in progress during the early twentieth century and the meaning of the Korean texts is not always clear-cut, even […] (Link to online store) | |
A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700–1850) Publisher description: Historians have claimed that when social stability returned to Korea after devastating invasions by the Japanese and Manchus around the turn of the seventeenth century, the late Chosŏn dynasty was a period of unprecedented economic and cultural renaissance, in which prosperity manifested itself in new programs and styles of visual art. A New Middle […] (Link to online store) | |
The Underground Village Kang Kyeong-ae (1906-1944) was a Korean writer whose stories are remarkable for their rejection of colonialism, patriarchy, and ethnic nationalism during a period when such views were truly radical and dangerous. Born in what is now North Korea, Kang wrote all her fiction in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation and witnessed the violence and daily […] (Link to online store) | |
Rules of the House: Family Law and Domestic Disputes in Colonial Korea From the publisher’s website: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Rules of the House offers a dynamic revisionist account of the Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910–1945) by examining the roles of women in the civil courts. Challenging […] (Link to online store) | |
At Dusk Park Minwoo is, by every measure, a success story. Born into poverty in a miserable neighbourhood of Seoul, he has ridden the wave of development in a rapidly modernising society. Now the director of a large architectural firm, his hard work and ambition have brought him triumph and satisfaction. But when his company is investigated […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953–1961 From the publisher’s website: In search of national unity and state control in the decade following the Korean War, North Korea turned to labor. Mandating rapid industrial growth, the government stressed order and consistency in everyday life at both work and home. In Heroes and Toilers, Cheehyung Harrison Kim offers an unprecedented account of life and […] (Link to online store) | |
The Tale of Cho Ung The Tale of Cho Ung is one of the most widely read and beloved stories of Choson Korea. The anonymously written tale recounts the adventures of protagonist Cho Ung as he fearlessly confronts and overcomes obstacles and grows into a heroic young man. As a child, Ung flees a wicked tyrant who wrongfully killed his […] (Link to online store) | |
City of Ash and Red Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun’s City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Korea: The Impossible Country. South Korea’s Amazing Rise from the Ashes – The Inside Story of an Economic, Political and Cultura From the publisher’s website: “Daniel Tudor covers all the important issues, yet does not simply tell the more familiar stories, but looks deeper and wider to give the full story of Korea today.” —Martin Uden, Former British Ambassador to South Korea In just fifty years, South Korea has transformed itself from a failed state, ruined and […] (Link to online store) | |
Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form From the publisher’s website: Winner of the The Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology The South Korean percussion genre, samul nori, is a world phenomenon whose rhythmic form is the key to its popularity and mobility. Based on both ethnographic research and close formal analysis, author Katherine In-Young Lee focuses on the kinetic experience of […] (Link to online store) | |
The Park Chung Hee Era: Economic Development and Modernization of the Republic of Korea From the publisher’s website: This volume presents a collection of authoritative summaries and analyses of the most significant economic policies of the Park Chung Hee years (1961–1979). It is the product of a major project by Korean academics and officials to critically review and analyze policies aimed at economic development and modernization of Korea. Most […] (Link to online store) | |
The Korean-American Dream: Portraits of a Successful Immigrant Community From the publisher’s website: Chairman Yang Ho Cho, head of Korean Air and Hanjin, talks of Los Angeles as a “microcosm of the United States—a land built of immigrants who want to do one thing: improve their lives.” In The Korean-American Dream, respected and distinguished business journalist James Flanigan uncovers the struggles and contributions of the […] (Link to online store) | |
My Very Last Possession and Other Stories An anthology of ten short stories by one of Korea’s foremost living writers. Pak Wanso is the author of five novels, including The Naked Tree, and of several best-selling volumes of short prose. Her works have sold millions of copies in Korea, where the public and critics alike have applauded Pak as a masterful realist. […] (Link to online store) | |
Bred from the Eyes of a Wolf Equal parts poetry, drama, and sci-fi, award-winning poet Kim Kyung Ju’s verse play BRED FROM THE EYES OF A WOLF follows a post-apocalyptic family of wolves (indistinguishable from humans) forced to taxidermy their own cubs in order to survive. An allegory for the degraded social relations of the present, Kim Kyung Ju’s all-too-familiar dystopia partitions […] (Link to online store) | |
Korean Confucianism: The Philosophy and Politics of Toegye and Yulgok From the publisher’s website: This book explores Neo-Confucianism and its relationship to politics by examining the life and work of the two iconic figures of the Joseon dynasty Yi Hwang (1501-1570, Toegye) and Yi I (1536-1584, Yulgok). Neo-Confucianism became state orthodoxy in 1392, and remained in place for over five centuries until the end of […] (Link to online store) | |
Mina “She doesn’t know what to do, and that amounts to a state of torture.” Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non- stop frenzy never quite manages […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
I’ll Go On ‘That’s how it generally is with Aeja’s stories. They’re as potent as a putrid peach. Listening to her words your head starts to droop with their sticky juice trickling down your ears, until all you can do is succumb to the saccharine flow.’ From one of South Korea’s most acclaimed young authors comes the story […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Bad Friends From the publisher’s website: Pearl is bad. She smokes, drinks, runs away from home, and has no qualms making her parents worry. Her mother and sister beg her to be a better student, sister, daughter; her beleaguered father expresses his concerns with his fists. Bad Friends is set in the 1990s in a South Korea torn between tradition […] (Link to online store) | |
The Korean Buddhist Empire: A Transnational History, 1910–1945 From the publisher’s website: In the first part of the twentieth century, Korean Buddhists, despite living under colonial rule, reconfigured sacred objects, festivals, urban temples, propagation—and even their own identities—to modernize and elevate Korean Buddhism. By focusing on six case studies, this book highlights the centrality of transnational relationships in the transformation of colonial Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, revised and updated edition From the publisher’s website: Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang’s Nuclear North Korea was first published in 2003 amid the outbreak of a lasting crisis over the North Korean nuclear program. It promptly became a landmark of an ongoing debate in academic and policy circles about whether to engage or contain North Korea. Fifteen years later, […] (Link to online store) | |
North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa: Enabling Violence and Instability From the publisher’s website: North Korea has posed a threat to stability in Northeast Asia for decades. Since Kim Jong-un assumed power, this threat has both increased and broadened. Since 2011, the small, isolated nation has detonated nuclear weapons multiple times, tested a wide variety of ballistic missiles, expanded naval and ground systems that threaten […] (Link to online store) | |
The Court Dancer Based on a remarkable true story, the New York Times bestselling author of Please Look After Mom brilliantly images the life of Yi Jin, an orphan who would fall under the affections of the Empress and become a jewel in the late Joseon Court. When a novice French diplomat arrives for an audience with the […] (Link to online store) | |
Lee Ufan: Art of Encounter Painter, sculptor, writer and philosopher Lee Ufan (born 1936) first came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of the major proponents of the Japanese avant-garde group Mono-ha. Japan’s first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition, the Mono-ha school of thought rejected Western notions of representation, choosing to focus on the relationships of […] (Link to online store) | |
Cultures of Yusin: South Korea in the 1970s From the publisher’s website: A broad range of scholars explores the many avenues of cultural production during the Yusin period, casting new light on how it challenged and conformed to the ambitions of the state power. Cultures of Yusin examines the turbulent and yet deeply formative period of time South Korea’s Fourth Republic (1972-79), beginning with […] (Link to online store) | |
Geopolitical Economy: The South Korean FTA Strategy From the publisher’s website: Geopolitical Economy examines the significance and nature of free trade agreements (FTAs), the primary policy tool through which modern nations seek access to international markets and promote economic growth. The book focuses specifically on how South Korea, the world’s leader in the number and significance of FTAs as well as the world’s […] (Link to online store) | |
K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance From the publisher’s website: 1990s South Korea saw the transition from a military dictatorship to a civilian government, from a manufacturing economy to a postindustrial hub, and from a cloistered society to a more dynamic transnational juncture. These seismic shifts had a profound impact on the media industry and the rise of K-pop. In K-pop Live, […] (Link to online store) | |
On an Autumn Night: Classical Korean Poetry From the back cover: The poems collected here are in classical Chinese, the language of learning in Korea before the turn of the twentieth century. Though they range from the seventh to the nineteenth century, most were written during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). They are five-character line quatrain poems written in the New Style, the […] (Link to online store) | |
Rationality in the North Korean Regime: Understanding the Kims’ Strategy of Provocation From the publisher’s website: How and why are the Kims rational? There is no consensus about either the Kims’ rationality or how best to determine if they are rational actors. Rationality in the North Korean Regime offers a concise and finite method to assess rationality by examining over ten cases of provocations from the Korean War to […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems by Kim Hyun (K-Poet 06) From the LTI Korea website: They(Poem) were born as part of a larger project, titled “The Future of Voice.” That is why I begin each poem with a sound effect, indicated by an international phonetic character, instead of simply adding footnotes. I hope that the sound, born in another time-space than the visiblbe(legible) screen(writing), has […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems by Ahn Sang-hak (K-Poet 05) From LTI Korea website: The world of Ahn Sang-Hak’s poetry is built on the philosophy of non-doing naturalism. According to this idea, since nature exists, it clearly has substance; however, since its nature is not to stay fixed, but rather to change in every moment, it only appears in variations of itself. In the same […] (Link to online store) | |
North Korean Human Rights: Activists and Networks From the publisher’s website: The evidentiary weight of North Korean defectors’ testimony depicting crimes against humanity has drawn considerable attention from the international community in recent years. Despite the attention to North Korean human rights, what remains unexamined is the rise of the transnational advocacy network, which drew attention to the issue in the first […] (Link to online store) | |
From the Mountains to the Cities: A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea From the publisher’s website: At the start of the twentieth century, the Korean Buddhist tradition was arguably at the lowest point in its 1,500-year history in the peninsula. Discriminatory policies and punitive measures imposed on the monastic community during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) had severely weakened Buddhist institutions. Prior to 1895, monastics were prohibited by […] (Link to online store) | |
Early Korea-Japan Interactions From the publisher’s website: Volumes in the Early Korea Project Occasional Series focus on central issues related to the study of early Korean history and archaeology. The present volume presents seven studies of interactions between societies and polities on the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago from an archaeological perspective. The time periods reflected in […] (Link to online store) | |
Cultural Policy in South Korea: Making a New Patron State From the publisher’s website: This is the first English-language book on cultural policy in Korea, which critically historicises and analyses the contentious and dynamic development of the policy. It highlights that the evolution of cultural policy has been bound up with the complicated political, economic and social trajectory of Korea to a surprising degree. Investigating […] (Link to online store) | |
Korean Gardens: Tradition, Symbolism and Resilience From the publisher’s website: Korean Gardens: Tradition, Symbolism and Resilience – The Western Gardeners’ Guide to the Essence of Korean Traditional Gardens Korean gardens strive to be in harmony with nature and to encourage the quiet contemplation of the natural world. They are intentionally humble in their conception and very different from Japanese and Chinese […] (Link to online store) | |
If my tongue refuses to remain in my mouth From the publisher’s website: Sunwoo Kim’s debut collection of poems, If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth, appeared in 2000, declaring in the boldest terms that at the outset of the new millennium she would bring to the page a radically different conception of poetry. Central to her work is the belief that […] (Link to online store) | |
Endless Blue Sky Set in 1940s colonial Korea and Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Endless Blue Sky tells the love story between Korean writer Ilma and Russian dancer Nadia. The novel is both a thrilling melodrama set in glamorous locations that would shortly be tragically ravaged by war, and a bold piece of writing espousing new ideas on love, marriage, and […] (Link to online store) | |
See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un’s North Korea From ballistic missile tests to stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations, news from North Korea never fails to dominate the global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Jeppesen culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in North Korea to create a multi-faceted portrait of the country […] (Link to online store) | |
A History of Korean Christianity From the publisher’s website: With a third of South Koreans now identifying themselves as Christian, Christian churches play an increasingly prominent role in the social and political events of the Korean peninsula. Sebastian C. H. Kim and Kirsteen Kim’s comprehensive and timely history of different Christian denominations in Korea includes surveys of the Catholic, Orthodox […] (Link to online store) | |
Conscience in Action: The Autobiography of Kim Dae-jung From the publisher’s website: This book is an English translation of the authoritative autobiography by the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The 2000 Nobel Peace Prize winner, often called the Asian Nelson Mandela, is best known for his tolerant and innovative “Sunshine Policy” towards North Korea. Written in the five years between the end […] (Link to online store) | |
The Foresight of Dark Knowing: Chŏng Kam Nok and Insurrectionary Prognostication in Pre-Modern Korea From the publisher’s website: Korea has long had an underground insurrectionary literature. The best-known example of the genre is the Chŏng Kam nok, a collection of premodern texts predicting the overthrow of the Yi Dynasty (1392–1910) that in recent times has been invoked by a wide range of groups to support various causes and agendas: from leaders […] (Link to online store) | |
Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom From the publisher’s website: Patriots, Traitors and Empires is an account of modern Korean history, written from the point of view of those who fought to free Korea from the domination of foreign empires. It traces the history of Korea’s struggle for freedom from opposition to Japanese colonialism starting in 1905 to North Korea’s current efforts […] (Link to online store) | |
The Changing Face of Korean Cinema: 1960 to 2015 From the publisher’s website: The rapid development of Korean cinema during the decades of the 1960s and 2000s reveals a dynamic cinematic history which runs parallel to the nation’s political, social, economic and cultural transformation during these formative periods. This book examines the ways in which South Korean cinema has undergone a transformation from an […] (Link to online store) | |
Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea Publisher description: Two issues central to the transition from the Koryo to the Choson dynasty in fourteenth-century Korea were social differences in ruling elites and the decline of Buddhism, which had been the state religion. In this revisionist history, Juhn Ahn challenges the long-accepted Confucian critique that Buddhism had become so powerful and corrupt that […] (Link to online store) | |
Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema From the publisher’s website: The colonial experience of the early twentieth century shaped Korea’s culture and identity, leaving a troubling past that was subtly reconstructed in South Korean postcolonial cinema. Relating postcolonial discourses to a reading of Manchurian action films, kisaeng and gangster films, and revenge horror films, Parameters of Disavowal shows how filmmakers reworked, […] (Link to online store) | |
Sovereign Violence: Ethics and South Korean Cinema in the New Millennium From the publisher’s website: South Korea is home to one of the most vibrant film industries in the world today, producing movies for a strong domestic market that are also drawing the attention of audiences worldwide. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of some of the most well-known and incendiary South Korean films of the […] (Link to online store) | |
The Paintings of Korean Shaman Gods: History, Relevance and Role as Religious Icons From the publisher’s website: This is the first comprehensive, fully illustrated study of Korean shaman gods to be published in English; it includes 130 full-colour plates of shaman gods, many dating back to the eighteenth century. In addition to the plate section, the volume comprises three texts: An illustrated introductory chapter by Christina Han on […] (Link to online store) | |
Mixed Korean: Our Stories From the Mixed Race Studies website: From the struggles of the Korean War, to the modern dilemmas faced by those who are mixed race, comes an assortment of stories that capture the essence of what it is to be a mixed Korean. With common themes of exclusion, and recollections of not looking Korean enough, black […] (Link to online store) | |
Dust and other stories Yi T’aejun was one of twentieth-century Korea’s true masters of the short story–and a man who in 1946 stunned his contemporaries by moving to the Soviet-occupied northern zone of his country. In South Korea, where he is known today as “one who went north,” Yi’s work was banned until 1988. His momentous decision did not […] (Link to online store) | |
Communication, Digital Media, and Popular Culture in Korea: Contemporary Research and Future Prospects From the publisher’s website: In recent decades, Korean communication and media have substantially grown to become some of the most significant segments of Korean society. Since the early 1990s, Korea has experienced several distinctive changes in its politics, economy, and technology, which are directly related to the development of local media and culture. Korea has […] (Link to online store) | |
The Good Son Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything’s all right at home – he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction Publisher description: North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is firmly fixed in the Western imagination as a barbaric vestige of the Cold War, a “rogue” nation that refuses to abide by international norms. It is seen as belligerent and oppressive, a poor nation bent on depriving its citizens of their basic human […] (Link to online store) | |
Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and “Multiculturalism” in Rural South Korea From the publisher’s website: Elusive Belonging examines the post-migration experiences of Filipina marriage immigrants in rural South Korea. Marriage migration—crossing national borders for marriage—has attracted significant public and scholarly attention, especially in new destination countries, which grapple with how to integrate marriage migrants and their children and what that integration means for citizenship boundaries and a […] (Link to online store) | |
The Korean Mind: Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture From the publisher’s website: Understanding a people and their culture through code words and language. Today, South Korea is an economic, technological and entertainment superpower. How, as a country, did they rebound from war, poverty and political unrest? And how can that success be replicated in other cultures? The answers can, in fact, be found […] (Link to online store) | |
Arts of Korea: Histories, Challenges, and Perspectives From the publisher’s website: A monumental addition to the understudied field of Korean art, this brilliantly illustrated volume assembles the perspectives of art historians, critics, curators, and museum directors from major universities and museums around the world to trace the varied and dynamic experiences of Korean art acquisitions over the past century. The first part […] (Link to online store) | |
Seo-u / Thou (K-Fiction 022) Synopsis pasted verbatim from Amazon.com Thou b The epicenter of ghost stories that began with “rumors of rumors of rumors” – In July 2018, “K-Fiction” Ganghwa road was elected as a “room” in the New Years edition of the Kyunghyang Newspaper in 2012 and started to work. He has been awarded the 8th Young Artist […] (Link to online store) | |
April Snow (K-Fiction 021) Synopsis pasted, in all its glorious Konglish, from Amazon.com: Snow of April b The story of people who feel the pain of others through their suffering b In April 2018, K-Fiction is the twenty-first piece, Son Won Pyung studied philosophy in sociology at the university and studied film directing at the Korean Film Academy. He […] (Link to online store) | |
Gendered Landscapes: Short Fiction by Modern and Contemporary Korean Women Novelists Gendered Landscapes presents ten short stories and novellas by representative modern Korean women writers dating from the 1930s to the end of the 1990s. Signature pieces selected from the acclaimed novelists’ repertoire, these narratives address issues related to Korean women as gendered beings in a Confucian-governed patriarchal society. Thematically interlinked and compellingly articulated, they bring […] (Link to online store) | |
Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea From the publisher’s website: With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Japan embarked on a policy of territorial expansion that would claim Taiwan and Korea, among others. Assimilation policies led to a significant body of literature written in Japanese by colonial writers by the 1930s. After its unconditional surrender in 1945, Japan abruptly […] (Link to online store) | |
The Korean War: An International History From the publisher’s website: This classic history of the Korean War—from its origins through the armistice—is now available in a paperback edition including a substantive introduction that considers the heightened danger of a new Northeast Asian war as Trump and Kim Jong-un escalate their rhetoric. Wada Haruki, one of the world’s leading scholars of the […] (Link to online store) | |
King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America’s Spymaster in Korea From the publisher’s website: In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden, reveals one of the most astonishing – and previously untold – spy stories of the twentieth century. Donald Nichols was ‘a one man war’, according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Ask A North Korean: Defectors Talk About Their Lives Inside the World’s Most Secretive Nation From the publisher’s website: “In his new book, Ask a North Korean, Daniel Tudor—a former Economist journalist and current Korean beer entrepreneur— wants people to understand the true lives of everyday North Koreans. Using translated essays written by defectors, the book covers topics from politics to pornography.” — The Boston Globe The weekly column Ask A North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers […] (Link to online store) | |
The Spread of the Korean Language Through the Korean Diaspora and Beyond From the publisher’s website: This volume of essays examines the development of Korean language education in expatriate Korean communities, and the role that the Korean government has played in the spread of the Korean language abroad. The ten contributors to this volume explore the dynamics of Korean language education in maintaining a sense of Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
Reading Colonial Korea through Fiction: The Ventriloquists Publisher description: Reading Colonial Korea through Fiction is a compilation of thirteen original essays which was first serialized in a quarterly issued by the National Institute of Korean Language, Saekukŏsaenghwal (Living our National Language Anew) in a column entitled, “Our Fiction, Our Language” between 2004 to 2007. Although the original intent of the Institute was to elucidate on […] (Link to online store) | |
From Miracle to Mirage: The Making and Unmaking of the Korean Middle Class, 1960-2015 From the publisher’s website: Myungji Yang’s From Miracle to Mirage is a critical account of the trajectory of state-sponsored middle-class formation in Korea in the second half of the twentieth century. Yang’s book offers a compelling story of the reality behind the myth of middle-class formation. Capturing the emergence, reproduction, and fragmentation of the Korean middle class, From […] (Link to online store) | |
North Korea: A History From the publisher’s website: In this key textbook, Michael J. Seth offers an excellent synthesis of existing scholarship, including a thorough examination of contemporary sources. Seth masterfully traces how North Korea gradually transformed itself from a Soviet-style socialist state to an ultra-nationalist, dynastic one, illuminating this journey with an engaging understanding of the political, ideological, […] (Link to online store) | |
Not My White Savior: A Memoir in Poems A provocative and furious book about race, culture, identity and what it means to be an inter-country adoptee in America Julayne Lee was born in South Korea to a mother she never knew. When she was an infant, she was adopted by a white Christian family in Minnesota, where she was sent to grow up. Not […] (Link to online store) | |
We, Day by Day From the publisher’s website: Whether suturing NoHae Park and Pablo Neruda together in a cinematic sweep or refusing the global economy’s demands to rush and sign over one’s literary life, Jin’s portraiture is time illuminated by an intelligence committed to “how strange questions, fountains of brilliant blood, gush unceasingly in the boundless desert of answers.” (Link to online store) | |
Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art From the publisher’s website: A dazzling exploration of the pictorial traditions inspired by Korea’s legendary Diamond Mountains The Diamond Mountains, known in Korea as Mount Geumgang, are perhaps the most famous and emotionally resonant site on the Korean Peninsula, a breathtaking range of rocky peaks, waterfalls, lagoons, and manmade pavilions. For centuries the range has […] (Link to online store) | |
Land of Tears Land of Tears is an anthology of short stories about the Korean experience of poverty and mental and physical anguish. Most of the stories have to do directly or indirectly with the Korean War. The stories depict the lives of a wide range of characters, such as a North Korean People’s Army soldier, a South […] (Link to online store) | |
A Black Kite From the publisher’s website: This selection from Kim Jong-Gil’s work contains just over 50 poems, written throughout his career and chosen by himself. The poems are those by which he wishes to be remembered. The topics are personal, often the result of a journey back to a place familiar in childhood, or of a moment […] (Link to online store) | |
Seoul: Memory, Reinvention, and the Korean Wave From the publisher’s website: Seoul is a colossus both in its physical presence and the demand it places on any intellectual effort to understand it. How did it come to be? How can a city this immense work? Underlying its spectacle and incongruities is a city that might be described as ill at ease with […] (Link to online store) | |
Pine Trees In Korea: Aesthetics and Symbolism From the publisher’s website: The Pine Tree as an Iconic Symbol of Korea’s Natural Landscape Lush pine forests can be found throughout the Korean peninsula as the pine tree has successfully adapted to its natural environment over thousands of years. The evergreen pine forests have a different ambience and beauty from one region to another, […] (Link to online store) | |
Transgression in Korea: Beyond Resistance and Control From the publisher’s website: Since the turn of the millennium South Korea has continued to grapple with transgressions that shook the nation to its core. Following the serial killings of Korea’s raincoat killer, the events that led to the dissolution of the United Progressive Party, the criminal negligence of the owner and also the crew members […] (Link to online store) | |
Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul Publisher description: The French writer and Nobel Literature laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio has harbored a keen interest in Korea that not only prompted him to learn and master the Korean language on his own but also inspired his new novel. Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul is Le Clézio’s portrait of Seoul—its people and its […] (Link to online store) | |
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World From the publisher’s website: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, WITH OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD AROUND THE WORLD ‘Is it the world that’s busy, or my mind?’ The world moves fast, but that doesn’t mean we have to. In this timely guide to mindfulness, Haemin Sunim, a Buddhist monk born in Korea and educated in the United […] (Link to online store) | |
The Korean War in Asia: A Hidden History From the publisher’s website: This book takes a fresh look at the Korean War by considering the conflict from a Northeast Asian regional perspective. It highlights the connections of the war to earlier conflicts in the region and examines the human impact of the war on neighboring countries, focusing particularly on the ways in which […] (Link to online store) | |
Dynamics of Expansion and Reduction – Selected Writings on Korean Contemporary Art Publisher description: This book, the first major publication in English devoted to the Korean critic and art historian Lee Yil, is a collection of texts on aesthetics, theory and history of art by the main observer of “Dansaekhwa”, or Korean monochrome. It also brings together essays and monographic prefaces that gave wide coverage to artists […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Whisper of Splendor From the publisher’s website: Whisper of Splendor brings about 60 poems from the author to demonstrate his poetic ideals and art. In the book, the reader notes the persona’s propensity to take away the tangled web of meanings that packs his consciousness, so that he can take in things as they are, as they move. Declining […] (Link to online store) | |
Your First Hanja Guide From the publisher’s website: This book contains essential Hanja characters that can be understood by most Korean adults, are commonly used on signs and in advertisements, and/or is sometimes still used in formal or traditional writing and art. Learning and understanding Hanja will not only help you when reading Chinese characters, but it will also […] (Link to online store) | |
The Aphorisms of Yi Deok-mu: Musings of a Grateful Reader From the publisher’s website: This volume brings together excerpts from Seongyuldang nongso [蟬橘堂濃笑: The Inexorable Glee of Master Seongyuldang] and Imokgusimseo [耳目口心書: First-hand Observations] by the 18th-century scholar Yi Deok-mu. Seongyuldang nongso is a collection of Yi’s observations about life. In Imokgusimseo, Yi writes about what he heard, saw, said, and felt in the day-to-day. […] (Link to online store) | |
South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers From the publisher’s website: Against the backdrop of China’s mounting influence and North Korea’s growing nuclear capability and expanding missile arsenal, South Korea faces a set of strategic choices that will shape its economic prospects and national security. In South Korea at the Crossroads, Scott A. Snyder examines the trajectory of fifty years of South Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
Igniting the Internet: Youth and Activism in Postauthoritarian South Korea From the publisher’s website: Igniting the Internet is one of the first books to examine in depth the development and consequences of Internet-born politics in the twenty-first century. It takes up the new wave of South Korean youth activism that originated online in 2002, when the country’s dynamic cyberspace transformed a vehicular accident involving two U.S. […] (Link to online store) | |
Premodern Korean Literary Prose: An Anthology This anthology presents new translations of Korean prose works from the tenth to the nineteenth century. It offers insight into past Korean societies by highlighting genres that have largely not been translated, such as diaries, short fictional biographies, erotic tales, oral narratives, and novellas, all of which illustrate the depth and variety of premodern Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
White Chrysanthemum Publisher description: ‘Look for your sister after each dive. Never forget. If you see her, you are safe.’ Hana and her little sister Emi are part of an island community of haenyo, women who make their living from diving deep into the sea off the southernmost tip of Korea. One day Hana sees a Japanese soldier […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Paper From the publisher’s website: The image of paper, beautifully wrought as the controlling metaphor, runs through each poem sometimes to lament humanity lost over dazzling civilization, sometimes to call for restoration by means of everything good a sheet of paper symbolizes, all in a voice quite pithy and restrained. This poetry book is a grain […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems of the North From the publisher’s website: Treasured in both Koreas, Baek Seok: Poems of the North opens an intriguing gateway into the spirit of the North Koreans of the 1930’s-50’s. In a land struggling for freedom and short of food, he treats his readers to the dishes they craved, exhibiting a Korea not in mired in the […] (Link to online store) | |
The Scorpion From the publisher’s website: In mainstream literature, it is not unusual to find a great novel whose themes are simultaneously universal and local. humanity and the human condition can be represented through characters and events that reflect the environment of an author living in a specific time and place. In the case of The Scorpion, […] (Link to online store) | |
The Boy who Escaped Paradise An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols are written in blood near the corpse. Gil-mo, a North Korean national who interprets the world through numbers, formulas, and mathematical theories, is arrested on the spot. Angela, a CIA operative, is assigned to gain his trust and access his unique persona. […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
P’ungsu: A Study of Geomancy in Korea From the publisher’s website: The first scholarly book to address Korean geomancy through an interdisciplinary lens. This book is a milestone in the history of academic research on the development and role of geomancy (fengshui in Chinese and p’ungsu in Korean) in Korean culture and society. As the first interdisciplinary work of its kind, it […] (Link to online store) | |
A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea The harrowing true story of one man’s life in―and subsequent escape from―North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal totalitarian regimes. Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen […] (Link to online store) | |
An Unknown Realm (K-Fiction 020) Synopsis from the Kyobo book store website, run through the Papago translator: Kwon Yeo-sun’s novel “The Unknown Area.” The main character Myung-deok hits the ball at dawn and exits the club alone and calls Dayoung. Dayoung was in Yeoju because of the ceramic biennale. The crescent-shaped daytime moon floats in the sky, and Myeongdeok, who […] (Link to online store) |
