New Books in Korean Studies

Mar 04 2025 125 ep. 57 mins 137
New Books in Korean Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Authors about their New Books in Korean Studies

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Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

Mar 04 2025 46 mins  
Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. In Bong Joon Ho (U Illinois Press, 2024), Joseph Jonghyun Jeon provides a consideration of the director's entire career and the themes, ambitions, techniques, and preoccupations that infuse his works. As Jeon shows, Bong's sense of spatial and

Seungsook Moon, "Civic Activism in South Korea: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Feb 12 2025 69 mins  
Dr. Seungsook Moon’s Civic Activism in South Korea: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism was published by Columbia University Press in July 2024. She provides in-depth qualitative studies of three different types of organizations to show how civic organizations that emerged from the democratization movement with a conscious emphasis on social change have sought to addr

Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)

Feb 07 2025 71 mins  
Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social-welfare crises affecting the region. Dr. Arvid J. Lukauskas and Dr. Yumiko Shimabukuro fill this gap and put a major asterisk on East Asia's econ

Willingness for climate action in South Korea and Finland: A cross-cultural comparison

Jan 12 2025 44 mins  
Climate change is among the most significant challenges facing modern society, and it impacts everyone across the world. How do people in different socio-cultural contexts perceive the climate crisis, and how willing are they to engage in climate-related action? In this episode, we will compare perceptions about climate change and willingness for climate action in South Korea and F

Sixiang Wang, "Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China" (Columbia UP, 2023)

Jan 09 2025 76 mins  
The Chosŏn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with Ming China, a relationship that was carefully cultivated and achieved only through the strategic deployment of cultural practices, values, and narratives by Chosŏn political actors. Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China (Columbia UP 2023) explores t

Victor D. Cha, "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Jan 02 2025 45 mins  
North Korea is, to this day, still one of the world’s most mysterious countries. What little we know about daily life in the country comes from defectors or foreigners who’ve spent time there–some of whom have been on this show. But both camps present narrow, if not slanted, views of what life is like in the country. Korea expert Victor Cha, along with several other researche

Timothy Gitzen, "Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses" (Helsinki UP, 2023)

Dec 13 2024 58 mins  
For more than 70 years, South Korea has woven the threat of North Korea into daily life. But now that threat has become mundane, and South Korean national security addresses family, public health, and national unity. Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses (Helsinki University Press, 2023) illustrates how as a result, queer Koreans are seen to represent a viral threat to

Tristan A. Volpe, "Leveraging Latency: How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclear Technology" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Dec 08 2024 72 mins  
Over the last seven decades, some states successfully leveraged the threat of acquiring atomic weapons to compel concessions from superpowers. For many others, however, this coercive gambit failed to work. When does nuclear latency--the technical capacity to build the bomb--enable states to pursue effective coercion? In Leveraging Latency: How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclea

Russell Thomas, "Tofu: A Culinary History" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

Dec 04 2024 51 mins  
To the untrained eye there’s nothing as unexciting as tofu, normally regarded as a tasteless, beige, congealed mass of crushed, boiled soybeans. However, tofu more than stands up on its own. Reviled for decades as a vegetarian oddity, the brave, wobbly block has made a comeback. Tofu: a Culinary History (Reaktion, 2024) by Russell Thomas is a global history of bean curd stretches

Park Jeong-Mi, "The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea" (U California Press, 2024)

Nov 19 2024 63 mins  
The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Park Jeong-Mi uncovers how the lives and work of women engaged in prostitution, long considered the most abased members of society, have been strategically intertwined with the lofty purpose of building South Korea's postcolonial nation-state. Through a