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The Power of the Brush

Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea

By Hwisang Cho

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295747828

The invention of an easily learned Korean alphabet in the mid-fifteenth century sparked an “epistolary revolution” in the following century as letter writing became an indispensable daily practice for elite men...

One Left

A Novel

By Kim Soom. Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton. Foreword by Bonnie Oh

During the Pacific War, more than 200,000 Korean girls were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers. They lived in horrific conditions in “comfort stations” across Japanese-occupied territories. Barely 10 percent survived to return to...

Seeds of Control

Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea

By David Fedman. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1905–1945) ushered in natural resource management programs that profoundly altered access to and ownership of the peninsula’s extensive mountains and forests. Under the banner of “forest love,” the colonial government...

Korean Skilled Workers

Toward a Labor Aristocracy

By Hyung-A Kim

South Korea’s triumphant development has catapulted the country’s economy to the eleventh largest in the world. Large family-owned conglomerates, or chaebŏls, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, have become globally preeminent manufacturing brands. Yet Korea’s...

International Impact of Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-1945

By Yong-Chool Ha

In recent years, discussion of the colonial period in Korea has centered mostly on the degree of exploitation or development that took place domestically, while international aspects have been relatively neglected. Colonial discourse, such as...

The Shaman's Wages

Trading in Ritual on Cheju Island

By Kyoim Yun

Breaking from previous scholarship on Korean shamanism, which focuses on mansin of mainland Korea, The Shaman’s Wages offers the first in-depth study of simbang, hereditary shamans on Cheju Island off the peninsula’s southwest coast. In...

Top-Down Democracy in South Korea

By Erik Mobrand

While popular movements in South Korea rightly grab the headlines for forcing political change and holding leaders to account, those movements are only part of the story of the construction and practice of democracy. In...

Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets

The Culture of Objects in Late Chosŏn Korean Art

By Sunglim Kim

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...

A New Middle Kingdom

Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700–1850)

By J. P. Park

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...

Buddhas and Ancestors

Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea

By Juhn Y. Ahn

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...

Peace Corps Volunteers and the Making of Korean Studies in the United States

By Seung-kyung Kim, Michael Robinson

From 1966 through 1981 the Peace Corps sent more than two thousand volunteers to South Korea, to teach English and provide healthcare. A small yet significant number of them returned to the United States and...

The Emotions of Justice

Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Choson Korea

By Jisoo M. Kim

The Choson state (1392–1910) is typically portrayed as a rigid society because of its hereditary status system, slavery, and Confucian gender norms. However, The Emotions of Justice reveals a surprisingly complex picture of a judicial...

Spaces of Possibility

In, Between, and Beyond Korea and Japan

By Clark W. Sorensen, Andrea Gevurtz Arai

Spaces of Possibility, which arose from a 2012 conference held at the University of Washington’s Simpson Center for the Humanities, engages with spaces in, between, and beyond the national borders of Japan and Korea. Some...

Offspring of Empire

The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876-1945

By Carter J. Eckert

According to conventional interpretations, the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 destroyed a budding native capitalist economy on the peninsula and blocked the development of a Korean capitalist class until 1945. In this expansive and...

Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions

Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty

By James B. Palais

Seventeenth-century Korea was a country in crisis—successive invasions by Hideyoshi and the Manchus had rocked the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), which already was weakened by maladministration, internecine bureaucratic factionalism, unfair taxation, concentration of wealth, military problems,...

Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea

By Gi-Wook Shin

The period from 1876 to 1946 in Korea marked a turbulent time when the country opened its market to foreign powers, became subject to Japanese colonialism, and was swept into agricultural commercialization, industrialization, and eventually...

Protestantism and Politics in Korea

By Chung-Shin Park

Following its introduction to Korea in the late nineteenth century, Protestantism grew rapidly both in numbers of followers and in influence, and remained a dominating social and political force throughout the twentieth century. In Protestantism...

Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945

By Mark E. Caprio

From the late nineteenth century, Japan sought to incorporate the Korean Peninsula into its expanding empire. Japan took control of Korea in 1910 and ruled it until the end of World War II. During this...

Building Ships, Building a Nation

Korea's Democratic Unionism Under Park Chung Hee

By Hwasook Nam

Building Ships, Building a Nation examines the rise and fall, during the rule of Park Chung Hee (1961-79), of the combative labor union at the Korea Shipbuilding and Engineering Corporation (KSEC), which was Korea's largest...

Heritage Management in Korea and Japan

The Politics of Antiquity and Identity

By Hyung Il Pai

Imperial tombs, Buddhist architecture, palaces, and art treasures in Korea and Japan have attracted scholars, collectors, and conservators—and millions of tourists. As iconic markers of racial and cultural identity at home and abroad, they are...