This presentation explores the common culture of Cold War scientism and atomic developmentalism in early North and South Korea. While tens of thousands of Koreans were subject to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, early peninsular analysis of the bombings rarely grappled with the existence of these individuals. The general exclusion of colonial subjects … [Read More]
Place: Japan
Selected publications
- Hwaji Shin: Being Korean, Becoming Japanese? Nationhood, Citizenship, and Resistance in Japan, University of Hawai'i Press 2024
- Yu Miri: The End of August tr Morgan Giles, Tilted Axis 2023
- Joshua Pilzer: Quietude: A Musical Anthropology of “Korea’s Hiroshima”, Oxford University Press 2022
- Elisa Shua Dusapin: The Pachinko Parlour tr Aneesa Abbas Higgins, Daunt 2022
- David Weiss: The God Susanoo and Korea in Japan’s Cultural Memory: Ancient Myths and Modern Empire, Bloomsbury 2022
- Markus Bell: Outsiders: Memories of Migration to and from North Korea, Berghahn Books 2021
- Nobuko Yamasaki: Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire: Fragmenting History, Routledge 2021
- Erik Ropers: Voices of the Korean Minority in Postwar Japan: Histories Against the Grain, Routledge 2020
- David Fedman: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea, University of Washington Press 2020
- Sujung Kim: Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”, University of Hawai'i Press 2019
- Yu Miri: Tokyo Ueno Station tr Morgan Giles, Tilted Axis 2019
- Kan Kimura: The Burden of the Past: Problems of Historical Perception in Japan-Korea Relations tr Marie Speed, University of Michigan Press 2019
- Mark E. Byington: Early Korea-Japan Interactions, University of Hawai'i Press 2018
- Christina Yi: Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea, Columbia University Press 2018
- Anthology: The Korean War in Asia: A Hidden History ed Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Rowman + Littlefield 2018
- Mary Lynn Bracht: White Chrysanthemum, Penguin 2018
- Min Jin Lee: Pachinko, Apollo 2017
- Kim Myung Ja: The Korean Diaspora in Post War Japan: Geopolitics, Identity and Nation-Building, Bloomsbury, I.B. Tauris 2017
- Oliver Dew: Zainichi Cinema: Korean-in-Japan Film Culture, Palgrave 2016
- Anthology: Spaces of Possibility: In, Between, and Beyond Korea and Japan ed Clark W. Sorensen and Andrea Gevurtz Arai, University of Washington Press 2016
- Jun Kimura: Archaeology of East Asian Shipbuilding, University Press of Florida 2016
- Celeste L Arrington: Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea, Cornell East Asia Series 2016
- Vladimir Tikhonov: Modern Korea and Its Others: Perceptions of the Neighbouring Countries and Korean Modernity, Routledge 2015
- Nayoung Aimee Kwon: Intimate Empire: Collaboration and Colonial Modernity in Korea and Japan, Duke University Press 2015
- Jun Uchida: Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945, Harvard University Press 2014
- Peter D Shapinsky: Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan, University of Michigan Press 2014
- JaHyun Kim Haboush, Kang Hang, Kenneth Robinson: A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597–1600: The Writings of Kang Hang tr JaHyun Kim Haboush, Kenneth R Robinson, Columbia University Press 2013
- Masuda Hiroshi: MacArthur in Asia: The General and His Staff in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea tr Yamamoto Reiko, Cornell East Asia Series 2012
- Anthology: Into the Light: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan ed Melissa L. Wender, University of Hawai'i Press 2010
- Charlotte von Verschuer: Across the Perilous Sea: Japanese Trade with China and Korea from the Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries tr Kristen Lee Hunter, Cornell East Asia Series 2010
- Ken C Kawashima: The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan, Duke University Press 2009
- Anthology: Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan ed Sonia Ryang and John Lie, University of California Press 2009
- Tessa Morris-Suzuki: Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War, Rowman + Littlefield 2007
- Melissa Wender: Lamentation as History: Narratives by Koreans in Japan, 1965-2000, Stanford University Press 2005
- Jackie J Kim: Hidden Treasures: Lives of First-Generation Korean Women in Japan, Rowman + Littlefield 2004
- Burglind Jungmann: Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Nanga, Princeton University Press 2004
- James B Lewis: Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan, Routledge 2003
- Anthology: Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin ed Sonia Ryang, Routledge 2000
- Chong Ki-Sheok: Black Flower in the Sky: Poems of a Korean Bridegroom in Hiroshima tr Elizabeth Ogata, Naoshi Koriyama, University of Hawai'i Press 2000
- Chin Sung Chung, Etsuro Totsuka, Keith Howard, Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan: True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women tr Young Joo Lee, Continuum 1995
- Peter Duus: The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910, University of California Press 1995
- Anthology: Women of Japan and Korea: Continuity and Change ed Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, Temple University Press 1994
- Alan Carter Covell, Jon Carter Covell: Korean Impact on Japanese Culture: Japan’s Hidden History, Hollym 1983
Whose Comfort? – book launch at the KCC
Friday 21 February 2020, 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm Korean Cultural Centre UK | Grand Buildings | 1-3 Strand | London WC2N 5B Admission free | Register via Google Docs Join World Scientific Publishing at the Korean Cultural Centre UK to celebrate the launch of Whose Comfort? The issue of sexual violence against civilian ‘comfort … [Read More]
Book review: Mary Lynn Bracht — White Chrysanthemum
Mary Lynn Bracht: White Chrysanthemum Penguin Random House 2018, 320pp White Chrysanthemum, the debut novel from Mary Lynn Bracht, tells the story of two sisters, brought up on Jeju Island, who were tragically separated in the last years of the Second World War. The elder sister, Hana, is abducted into sexual slavery by a Japanese … [Read More]
SOAS conference: Senses and the Meanings of Modernity in East Asia, 1890–1945
A conference at SOAS with some Korean interest, including sessions on the Local Colour Movement and on Korean film and food diplomacy: The Senses and the Meanings of Modernity in East Asia, 1890–1945 An exploratory workshop 18 June 2018, room S116 (Senate House), SOAS, University of London Reflecting recent shifts towards the study of embodied … [Read More]
Japan Society talk: Escaping to North Korea – with Markus Bell
Apologies for the late notice of tomorrow’s talk organised by the Japan Society, which may by now be fully subscribed. The speaker gave a fascinating talk at SOAS on broadly the same subject a few months ago, so I’d have high hopes of this one too. Escaping to North Korea – with Markus Bell 19 … [Read More]
SOAS conference: Colonialism and its Reverberations
A good half-day conference coming at the beginning of February. Check the event’s Facebook page or the SOAS website for updates. Colonialism and its Reverberations: ‘Comfort Women’ and Historical Revisionism in Korea and Japan Professor Yonson Ahn (University of Frankfurt), Professor Vladimir Tikhonov (University of Oslo), Professor Chong Yeonghwan (Meiji Gakuin University) 3 February 2018, … [Read More]
Book review: Frontier Contact Between Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan
James B. Lewis: Frontier Contact Between Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan Routledge, 2003, 340pp What a relief to return to some non-fiction. And although at LKL we are wholly unqualified to review academic works, we don’t mind saying why we it is that we like a particular book. Frontier Contact paints a fascinating picture of … [Read More]
Film review: The Battleship Island
Synopsis Some nasty Japanese are being beastly to the Korean forced labourers in an offshore Japanese coal mine as the Second World War comes to a close. And one or two Koreans aren’t exactly being that patriotic either. In the middle of it all is a weak, venal Korean who is among the labourers with … [Read More]
Visiting Korean students protest Comfort Woman issue
Great to see so many young people from South Korea raising awareness of the ‘comfort women’ issue in London today, performing and protesting at the Japanese embassy and Trafalgar Square. [Read More]
Looking back at 2015: DPRK and regional news
In our third review of 2015, we look at some of the North Korea related news, and stories which put the peninsula in a wider East Asian context. DPRK Human rights and defectors Shin Dong-hyuk, the most prominent campaigner among the defector community, admitted that some of his testimony (eg, in Escape from Camp 14) … [Read More]
Supporters of Comfort Women to protest outside Korean Embassy
When the BBC reported the “deal” between Japan and South Korea on the Comfort Women issue last week, saying that ‘South Korea says it will consider the matter resolved “finally and irreversibly” if Japan fulfills its promises,’ LKL marvelled that no mention was made of what the victims themselves thought about the deal. They don’t … [Read More]
A surviving victim’s view on the Korea-Japan Comfort Women “deal”
In September this year 90 year old survivor of WW2 Japanese military sexual slavery Kim Bok-dong gave two public talks in London, at the Korean Cultural Centre and at Goldsmiths University. She said she had come, ‘not as a victim but as a human rights activist’, and explained that the surviving ladies were not just … [Read More]
Statements on the Comfort Women issue
Statements published jointly today by the Japanese and South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs aim to bring closure to the issue of wartime sexual slavery. The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan also published a statement on the inter-governmental announcements, which says that the issue is by no means … [Read More]
Brief conference report: Deconstructing Boundaries: is “East Asian Art History” possible, at SOAS
This weekend’s two-day conference at SOAS (10-11 October), hosted by the Japan Research Centre, presented some fascinating papers on art history in East Asia. The question it asked – ‘Is “East Asian Art History” possible?’ – is at first sight a puzzling one (why should it not be?), until one scratches below the surface as … [Read More]
Found in London’s Japan Centre: kimchi lemonade
Kimchi flavoured lemonade is down in price – can’t imagine why. But according to Rocket News, who have also sampled curry, octopus and chili pepper Ramune sodas: “It’s damn good!” [Read More]
If you’re into J-pop as well as K-pop, Japako is for you
I just received an email from Japako magazine in my inbox – a new magazine (available by preorder) that covers Korean and Japanese pop music and culture. Their 2nd issue is available for preorder now, with a special deal to get the first issue as well. Here’s what they told me: Japako Music was founded … [Read More]