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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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Marginality and Subversion in Korea

The Hong Kyongnae Rebellion of 1812

By Sun Joo Kim

In the history of Korea, the nineteenth century is often considered an age of popular rebellions. Scholarly approaches have typically pointed to these rebellions as evidence of the progressive direction of the period, often using...

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...

Fighting for the Enemy

Koreans in Japan's War, 1937-1945

By Brandon Palmer

Fighting for the Enemy explores the participation of Koreans in the Japanese military and supporting industries before and during World War II, first through voluntary enlistment and eventually through conscription. Contrary to popular belief among...

Wrongful Deaths

Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea

By Sun Joo Kim, Jungwon Kim

This collection presents and analyzes inquest records that tell the stories of ordinary Korean people under the Choson court (1392-1910). Extending the study of this period, usually limited to elites, into the realm of everyday...

The Origins of the Choson Dynasty

By John B. Duncan

The Origins of the Choson Dynasty provides an exhaustive analysis of the structure and composition of Korea's central officialdom during the transition from the Koryo dynasty (918-1392) to the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) and offers a...

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...