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]
Booklist: Colonial Period
Imperial Entertainers: Korean Women Performers from Military to Global Stages, 1937–75
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]
The Sensational Proletarian: Leftist Cultures in Colonial Korea
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]
Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung was the enigmatic architect of North Korea. His life is an extraordinary tale of improbable success: once a barely educated guerrilla fighter, he rose to lead the nation at the young age of 33. Against all odds, he established a horrifyingly stable dictatorial regime, one that still struggles to provide for its people, … [Read More]
Art, War, and Exile in Modern Korea: Rethinking the Life and Work of Lee Qoede
This book celebrates the life and works of Lee Qoede (1913–1965), who focused on art’s social purpose and representation of civilians. He believed “art must be an integral part of the struggle in reality. It cannot simply be a still-life of apples, flowers, or scenery.” Born in South Korea, he was a prisoner of war, … [Read More]
Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan’s Empire in Korea and Manchuria
Border of Water and Ice explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during a period of Japanese imperial expansion into the region. The Yalu’s seasonal patterns of freezing, thawing, and flooding shaped colonial efforts to control who and what could cross the border. Joseph A. Seeley shows … [Read More]
The Emergence of the Korean Art Collector and the Korean Art Market
Articulating the shifting interests in Korean art and offering new ways of conceiving the biases that initiated and impacted its collecting, this book traces the rise of the modern Korean art market from its formative period in the 1870s through to its peak and subsequent decline in the 1930s. The discussion centres on the collecting … [Read More]
Comfort Women of the Japanese Empire: Colonial Rule and the Battle over Memory
This is an important and controversial book, hitherto available only in Korean, Japanese and Chinese, a book which has been subject to court cases attempting to have some parts of the book deleted. The author reconsiders the issue of the “comfort women”, that is the Korean women who were compelled to provide sexual comfort to … [Read More]
Song of Arirang: The Story of a Korean Rebel Revolutionary in China
Song of Arirang tells the true story of Korean revolutionary Kim San (Jang Jirak), who left colonized Korea as a teenager to fight against Japanese imperialism and fought alongside Mao’s Red Army during the Chinese Revolution. First published in 1941, this remarkably intimate memoir (as told to the American journalist Nym Wales aka Helen Foster … [Read More]
Modern Korean Digraphia: Metanarration and National Identity, 1894–1972
William Strnad traces the formation and development of modern Korean digraphia during the years 1894–1972, including a description and analysis of the historical discourse related to Korean phonetic script and Chinese characters. Modern Korean digraphia was contextualized and altered amid the global emancipation and speculative metanarratives of modernity, and the national metanarratives of nationalism and … [Read More]
Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History
“Absorbing…Starry Field reminds us that even knowing where we came from won’t tell us where we’re going – but it will help along the way.” Susan Choi, National Book Award winning author of Trust Exercise A poignant memoir for readers who love Pachinko and The Return by journalist Margaret Juhae Lee, who sets out on a search for her family’s history … [Read More]
Moral Authoritarianism: Neighborhood Associations in the Three Koreas, 1931–1972
Moral Authoritarianism offers a new perspective on the three modern Korean states—the Japanese colonial state, South Korea, and North Korea—by studying neighborhood associations during the four war decades (1930s–1960s). The existing historiography perceives the three states in relation to imperialism and to the Cold War, thus emphasizing their differences by political changes. By shifting the focus … [Read More]
Transnationalism and Migration in Global Korea: History, Politics, and Sociology, 1910 to the Present
Contrary to the image of Korea as a largely self-contained country until its economy became global during the 1990s, this book shows that transnationalism has firmly been part of modern Korea’s national experience throughout its existence. The volume portrays Korea’s frequent transnational entanglements with other nations in East Asia and the West from the start … [Read More]
The Red Decades: Communism as Movement and Culture in Korea, 1919–1945
Focusing on previously neglected cultural expressions of colonial-period Korean socialism such as Marxist philosophy, Marxist historiography, and travelogues by socialist writers, The Red Decades reveals Marxian socialism as a cultural phenomenon of colonial-age Korea. Providing an account of the social composition of the Communist milieu in 1920s and 1930s Korea and outlining the aims of … [Read More]
The Making of Modern Subjects: Public Discourses on Korean Female Spectators in the Early Twentieth Century
Under Japanese colonial rule in the early 20th century, Korean women began to expand their realm from the domestic to the public sphere. Sung Un Gang examines how the women’s gaze was reimagined in public discourse as they began attending plays and movies, and investigates the complex negotiation process surrounding women’s public presence. As the … [Read More]
East Asia Observed: Selected Writings 1973-2021
This collection brings together themes in East Asian history, diplomacy, culture and politics written by J E Hoare since the early 1970s. His writings derive from his training as a historian, from his time as a Research Analyst in the British Foreign Office from 1969-2003, and from his experiences as a diplomat in the Republic … [Read More]