A Contemporary Portrait of Life in Korea

A Contemporary Portrait of Life in Korea
Author: Jibum Kim
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2023-10-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9819958296

This book delves into the values, attitudes, and behaviours of Koreans over the course of the past twenty years. Compiled by leading Korean scholars, the book uses the Korean General Social Survey (KGSS), the most comprehensive source of information detailing recent continuity and change in Korea, and addresses a diverse, wide-range of topics such as nationalism, familyism, social inequality, politics, religion, welfare, trust, attitudes towards North Korea, and attitudes towards sex. These issues, in continuously shaping and influencing the lives of Koreans, deserve further examination so as to fully grasp a deeper understanding of Korean contemporary culture. Each chapter covers an overview of background information about the chapter subject and then compares Korean attitudes to those of other countries, drawing on cross-national data derived from sources such as the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the East Asian Social Survey (EASS). It collates this data and then unpacks it to demonstrate trends and how they are impacted by stability or change. Despite the rapid economic development and democratization in Korea, it remains difficult to pinpoint common denominators regarding recent social trends in Korea, and there are surprisingly few books that present a current, nuanced, and empirically substantiated scholarly depiction of Koreans and their social issues. This book fills this gap in serving as an indispensable reference for students and scholars interested in the diverse issues in Korean society.

Living Through the Forgotten War

Living Through the Forgotten War
Author: Patrick Dowdey
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2003
Genre: Art
ISBN:

The year 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the armistice that ended the hot war on the Korean peninsula. The Korean War started as a civil conflict and then grew into an all-out superpower war. Whole cities were levelled, factories destroyed, homes torched, farmers uprooted from their fields. This book presents an expanded view of the war in Korea that Americans know little about. In addition to dramatic photographs are two insightful essays that provide an introduction to events during and after the war. The photographs here have been selected from among the tens of thousands that were taken by American military photographers and are now held by the National Archives and Record Administration. Most of those document combat, war materiel, and the life of GIs. The group in this book show something deeper. Here are the faces of people who lived through the effects of the headlines. They are POWs, Koreans, GIs, people mostly without nice clothes, with simple, generic titles like son, comrade, ajumoni (auntie), or private; people mostly afoot, a few armed, many just waiting. These people caught in war share a silent unity that bridges the categories of North, South, civilian, soldier, and prisoner. They become a part of history and memory.

Heroes and Toilers

Heroes and Toilers
Author: Cheehyung Harrison Kim
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231546092

In search of national unity and state control in the decade following the Korean War, North Korea turned to labor. Mandating rapid industrial growth, the government stressed order and consistency in everyday life at both work and home. In Heroes and Toilers, Cheehyung Harrison Kim offers an unprecedented account of life and labor in postwar North Korea that brings together the roles of governance and resistance. Kim traces the state’s pursuit of progress through industrialism and examines how ordinary people challenged it every step of the way. Even more than coercion or violence, he argues, work was crucial to state control. Industrial labor was both mode of production and mode of governance, characterized by repetitive work, mass mobilization, labor heroes, and the insistence on convergence between living and working. At the same time, workers challenged and reconfigured state power to accommodate their circumstances—coming late to work, switching jobs, fighting with bosses, and profiting from the black market, as well as following approved paths to secure their livelihood, resolve conflict, and find happiness. Heroes and Toilers is a groundbreaking analysis of postwar North Korea that avoids the pitfalls of exoticism and exceptionalism to offer a new answer to the fundamental question of North Korea’s historical development.

Printed in North Korea: The Art of Everyday Life in the DPRK

Printed in North Korea: The Art of Everyday Life in the DPRK
Author: Nick Bonner
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-09-25
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780714879239

Never-before-seen North Korea - a rare glimpse into the country behind the politics and the creativity behind the propaganda This incredible collection of prints dating from the 1950s to the twenty-first century is the only one of its kind in or outside North Korea. Depicting the everyday lives of the country's train conductors, steelworkers, weavers, farmers, scientists, and fishermen, these unique lino-cut and woodblock prints are a fascinating way to explore the culture of this still virtually unknown country. Together, they are an unparalleled testament to the talent of North Korea's artists and the unique social, cultural, and political conditions in which they work.

Modern Korea: All That Matters

Modern Korea: All That Matters
Author: Andrew Salmon
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1473601274

In no nation on earth has history accelerated with such speed as in Korea. A medieval dynasty at the end of the 19th century, it underwent a traumatic colonization, then, in its hour of liberation was divided by the great powers at the end of World War II. Devastated by a fratricidal war, the peninsula has remained divided ever since. South Korea is the greatest national success story of the 20th century. From the ashes of war, it transformed itself, against the odds - and against much advice - into an industrial powerhouse and thriving democracy. Now a high-tech wonderland, it is undergoing social and cultural transformations that add further layers to its dynamic DNA. North Korea is an economic, social and political disaster, successful only at totalitarianism. Having transmogrified from a blood-and-iron communist dictatorship into a bizarre, neo-fascist monarchy, it is a black hole at the heart of Asia. Engulfed by paranoia, the regime presides over a malnourished populace, a 1.1 million man army and a nuclear arsenal. From nuclear missiles to Samsung smartphones; from assassins to salarymen; from Kim Il-sung to Psy; this is the extraordinary story of the flashpoint peninsula that dominates talk in boardrooms and newsrooms. Korea, the author argues, provides two stark benchmarks for national development: Epic success and catastrophic failure. And its final chapter has yet to be written.

Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas

Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas
Author: Esther Kim Lee
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2012-08-21
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0822352745

By bringing the plays together in this collection, Esther Kim Lee highlights the themes and styles that have enlivened Korean diasporic theater in the Americas since the 1990s. Some of the plays are set in urban Koreatowns. One takes place in the middle of Texas, while another unfolds entirely in a character's mind. Ethnic identity is not as central as it was in the work of previous generations of Asian diasporic playwrights.

If I Had Your Face

If I Had Your Face
Author: Frances Cha
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593129474

A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania “Powerful and provocative . . . a novel about female strength, spirit, resilience—and the solace that friendship can sometimes provide.”—The Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • NPR • Esquire • Bustle • BBC • New York Post • InStyle Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul “room salon,” an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood. Kyuri’s roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the heir to one of the country’s biggest conglomerates. Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life. And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea’s brutal economy. Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.

The New Koreans

The New Koreans
Author: Michael Breen
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250065054

"Just a few decades ago, the Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one generation they moved from the fields to Silicon Valley. The nature and values of the Korean people provide the background for a more detailed examination of the complex history of the country, in particular its division and its emergence as an economic superpower. Who are these people? And where does their future lie?"--

A Cultural History of Modern Korean Literature

A Cultural History of Modern Korean Literature
Author: Kyounghoon Lee
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2022-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1666906298

This book examines one of the seminal chapters in the history of the modern Korea. Through an analysis of texts of various genres and types, the author analyzes Japanese colonialism and modernity and its impact on Korean culture and society during the first half of the twentieth century.

Innovations of Modern Korean Theatre in the 20th Century

Innovations of Modern Korean Theatre in the 20th Century
Author: Meewon Lee
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2024-09-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040145000

Lee provides a comprehensive insight into important topics within modern Korean theatre and conducts an in-depth evaluation of the major discourses that shaped Korean theatre during the 20th century. The book adopts a topical approach to explore modern Korean theatre through a more focused lens. Examining key subjects such as Korean Playwrights. Korean adaptations of Shakespeare, the National Theatre, feminist theatre, and the intercultural potential of a Far Eastern theatrical bloc, it provides a rigorous understanding of the evolution of Korean theatre during the 20th century and explores the moments of rupture and innovation within the chronological history of theatre. The book is a vital resource of interest to scholars and students interested in East Asian culture and theatre, specifically Korean culture.