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Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan

Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea

By Maya K. H. Stiller

North Korea’s Kŭmgangsan is one of Asia’s most celebrated sacred mountain ranges, comparable in fame to Mount Tai in China and Mount Fuji in Japan. Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan marks a paradigm shift in the...

The Power of the Brush

Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea

By Hwisang Cho

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 and women alike. The...

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...

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...

Reassessing the Park Chung Hee Era, 1961-1979

Development, Political Thought, Democracy, and Cultural Influence

By Hyung-A Kim, Clark W. Sorensen

The Republic of Korea achieved a double revolution in the second half of the twentieth century. In just over three decades, South Korea transformed itself from an underdeveloped, agrarian country into an affluent, industrialized one....

Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910-1945

By Hong Yung Lee, Yong-Chool Ha, Clark W. Sorensen

Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910-1945 highlights the complex interaction between indigenous activity and colonial governance, emphasizing how Japanese rule adapted to Korean and missionary initiatives, as well as how Koreans found space...

Over the Mountains Are Mountains

Korean Peasant Households and Their Adaptations to Rapid Industrialization

By Clark W. Sorensen. Foreword by Clark W. Sorensen

Clark Sorensen presents a description of the economic and ecological organization of rural Korean domestic groups and an analysis of their adaption to the changes brought about by Korea's rapid industrialization.

Still one of the only...

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...

Beyond Death

The Politics of Suicide and Martyrdom in Korea

By Charles R. Kim, Jungwon Kim, Hwasook B. Nam, Serk-Bae Suh

Suicide and martyrdom are closely intertwined with Korean social and political processes. In this first book-length study of the evolving ideals of honorable death and martyrdom from the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910) to contemporary South Korea,...