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]
Booklist: Modern History (page 3)
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]
South Korea’s Grand Strategy: Making Its Own Destiny
Since the end of the Cold War, South Korea has taken on a greater role in global affairs. Ramon Pacheco Pardo provides a groundbreaking analysis of South Korea’s foreign policy from its transition to democracy in the late 1980s through the present day, arguing that the country’s approach to the world constitutes a grand strategy. … [Read More]
Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea
Celluloid Democracy tells the story of the Korean filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors who reshaped cinema in radically empowering ways through the decades of authoritarian rule that followed Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation. Employing tactics that ranged from representing the dispossessed on the screen to redistributing state-controlled resources through bootlegging, these film workers explored ideas and practices … [Read More]
The Naked Tree
A delicate, timeless, and breathtaking coming-of-age classic, reimagined Critically acclaimed and award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim returns with a stunning addition to her body of graphic fiction rooted in Korean history. Adapted from Park Wan-suh’s beloved novel, The Naked Tree paints a stark portrait of a single nation’s fabric slowly torn to shreds by political upheaval and armed … [Read More]
Literature and Cultural Identity during the Korean War: Comparing North and South Korean Writing
Through an in-depth analysis of wartime essays and literary works, Literature and Cultural Identity during the Korean War considers the similarities and differences in the way that writers from both North and South Korea perceived and experienced the conflict. In this book, Jerôme de Wit examines the social impact of major themes in the output … [Read More]
Korea at War: Conflicts That Shaped the World
An engaging history covering a century of conflict on the Korean Peninsula Korea at War recounts how two separate nations emerged on the Korean peninsula as the result of devastating conflicts involving provocative personalities and superpower intrigues. The topics covered in this fascinating book include: The brutal years of Japanese colonial rule which began with Japan’s … [Read More]
Justifying Violence on Korea’s Cold War Frontlines: The Life and Representations of Kim Tu-han
The son of a nationalist martyr, Kim Tu-han (1918-1972) rose to prominence as a mobster in 1930s Seoul. As conditions shifted, he deployed his gang first as a construction corps supporting the Japanese war effort, then as a progressive force, and, most successfully, as an anti-communist vigilante group. After narrowly escaping the death sentence for … [Read More]
The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia
A dramatic new telling of the dawn of modern East Asia, placing Korea at the center of a transformed world order wrought by imperial greed and devastating wars. In the nineteenth century, Russia participated in two “great games”: one, well known, pitted the tsar’s empire against Britain in Central Asia. The other, hitherto unrecognized but … [Read More]
City of Sediments: A History of Seoul in the Age of Colonialism
Once the capital of the five-hundred-year Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897) and the Taehan Empire (1897–1910), the city of Seoul posed unique challenges to urban reform and modernization under Japanese colonial rule in the early twentieth century, constrained by the labyrinthian built environment of the old Korean capital. Colonial authorities attempted to employ a strategy of “erasure”—monumental … [Read More]
A Forgotten British War: The Accounts of Korean War Veterans
This book presents oral histories from the last surviving UK veterans of the Korean War. With the help of the UK National Army Museum and the British Korean Society, this book collects nearly twenty testimonials of UK veterans of the Korean War. Many only teenagers when mobilized, these veterans attempt to put words to the … [Read More]
Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’ s Rights Worldwide
An eye-opening firsthand account of the ongoing and trailblazing feminist movement in South Korea—one that the world should be watching. Since the beginning of the #MeToo movement, tens of thousands of people in South Korea have taken to the street, and many more brave individuals took a stand, to end a decades-long abortion ban and … [Read More]
Skull Water
A remarkable intergenerational coming-of-age novel set in South Korea—about friendship, belonging, and displacement. Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu—the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army—spends his days with his “half and half” friends skipping school, … [Read More]
100°C: South Korea’s 1987 Democracy Movement
What does it take for ordinary citizens to risk everything to protest living under a repressive government? What takes them beyond the brink, to the “boiling point”? In his graphic novel 100°C, celebrated webtoon and comics artist Choi Kyu-sok sheds a light on these questions by examining the lives of one family caught up in the great … [Read More]
Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea: Movements for Political and Economic Democratization in the 21st Century
Nationalism in a nation-state reflects its emergent structural, cultural, and personal properties at a given time. In the politico-historical context of South Korea and the globe, the fruits of the 1968 Revolution in France could not reach Korean society under its military regime and exploitative economic structure. This continued to frustrate the grassroots and especially social actors … [Read More]