New Books in Korean Studies
by New Books Network
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/korean-studies
Episodes
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Cosmopolitan Memories, Vernacular Visions: The Roots of Modern Korean with Daniel Pieper (U Toronto Press, 2026)
Cosmopolitan Memories, Vernacular Visions: The Roots of Modern Korean (U Toronto Press, 2026) traces the emergence of vernacular Korean as a distinct subject of study in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Centering on school textbooks as key sites of change, Daniel Pieper reveals...
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Jerome Sauvage, "Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013. In this capacity, he was the most senior UN official in North Korea during one of the most eventful political periods on the...
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Remco E Breuker, "Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip" (U Hawaii Press, 2026)
Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip (University of Hawaii Press, 2026) comprises translations of poems, tales, letters, epitaphs, and funeral orations by Yi Kyubo (1168–1241), the foremost writer and poet of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). Dr....
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Voices from North Korea: Refugees Tell Their Stories
n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North...
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Jieun Baek, "Privileged But Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness" (Yale UP, 2026)
What do the people closest to power really think about the system they serve? That’s perhaps one of the most important questions one could ask about North Korea, still one of the world’s least understood countries. Today, we’re joined by Jieun Baek, author of Privileged But Powerless: How North...
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Edward Goldring, "Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal of individuals from within the regime. From Kim Jong Un's execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's…
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Jin Y. Park and Sumi Lee eds., "Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts" (U Hawaii Press, 2026)
Today we're looking at a book that fills a gap that has existed for a long time. Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts (U Hawaii Press, 2026), edited by Jin Park and Sumi Lee and published this year by the University of Hawai'i Press, is the first comprehensive introduction to…
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Jonathan Cheng, "Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult" (Knopf, 2026)
Of the two Koreas, it is the South which appears much the more Christian today, with all major cities dotted with church spires and illuminated crosses. But a century ago it was the northern half of the peninsula that was the more established home for Christianity, the northwestern city of...
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Jinwon Kim, "Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand" (NYU Press, 2026)
How Manhattan's Koreatown functions as a new ethnic enclave In the past decade, Korean entertainment has gained global recognition, with Korean movies and TV shows winning Oscars and Emmys, and K-Pop groups becoming wildly popular. In Manhattan, Koreatown has become a popular destination for both...
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Don Baker, "Korean New Religions" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Korean New Religions (Cambridge University Press, 2025) is an excellent primer for anyone interested in modern Korea’s religious landscape. The Korean peninsula has dramatically transformed over the past century, and various new religions have emerged. Dr. Donald Baker outlines these new…
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Paige Towers, "What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption" (U Iowa Press, 2026)
In 1955, following the devastation of the Korean War, Bertha and Harry Holt made headlines for adopting eight Korean children. Driven by evangelical convictions and emboldened by a special act of Congress, the couple founded the Holt Adoption Program, which would facilitate the migration of tens…
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Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)
In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One…
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Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)
In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One…
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Gregg A. Brazinsky, "Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In this major new interpretation of Sino-North Korean relations, Dr. Gregg A. Brazinsky argues that neither the PRC nor the DPRK would have survived as socialist states without the ideal of Sino-North Korean friendship. Chinese and North Korean leaders encouraged mutual empathy and sentimental...
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Fyodor Tertititsky, "Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea" (Hurst, 2026)
North Korea has survived wars, sanctions, and isolation—to the point where it now seems that the continuation of the Kim dynasty, and a starkly divided Korea, is assured. But history is filled with events where some change might have drastically altered how a country’s development might have…
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David Krolikoski, "Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea" (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)
Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)is a literary history of modern Korean poetry's origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a...
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Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026)
Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous books related to North Korea and is a regular commentator on the country’s elite social and political structures. I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside...
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Patrick Chung, "Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026) by Dr. Patrick Chung traces the origins of today’s United States-led capitalist world economy. The nation’s foreign policy during the Cold War saw two unprecedented...
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Jie-Hyun Lim, "Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Nationalism today depends on the perception of victimhood. The historical memory of past suffering endows nationalist movements with political legitimacy and a sense of moral superiority. Koreans recall Japanese colonial atrocities, while Japan commemorates the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and...
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Su Hwa Keum, "From Juche to Jesus: A Study of Worldview Transformation Among North Korean Defector Christians in South Korea" (Pickwick Publications, 2025)
In From Juche to Jesus: A Study of Worldview Transformation Among North Korean Defector Christians in South Korea (Pickwick Publications, 2025), Su Hwa Keum explores the profound spiritual journeys of North Korean defectors as they navigate the transition from Juche ideology to faith in Christ....
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Areum Jeong, "K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today (U Michigan Press, 2026) insists that K-pop fan practices and activities constitute a central productive force, shaping not only K-pop’s explosive global popularity, but also K-pop’s cultural impacts, politics, and horizons of possibility....
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Min Joo Lee, "Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race (Rutgers UP, 2025) by Dr. Min Joo Lee explores the romantic relationships between Korean men and women who were inspired by romantic Korean televisual depictions of Korean masculinity to travel to Korea as tourists. Dr. Lee argues that...
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Re-examining the Women’s Movement in Cold War South Korea and Beyond
In the past decade, feminism has become one of the heated topics in public debate in South Korea. Feminism is embraced by activists, attacked in election campaigns, and increasingly framed as the source of conflict between men and women. In this episode, Outi Luova talks to Katri Kauhanen to…
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Serk-Bae Suh, "Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2025) explores literary texts that countered the prevailing rhetoric of South Korea’s exploitative developmental state. These texts capture moments of anti-utilitarian sacrifice…
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Joel S. Wit, "Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea" (Yale UP, 2025)
After nearly four decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, threats, and backdoor channels, the United States has failed to stop North Korea's nuclear program which now has the capability to strike American cities with weapons of mass destruction. In Fallout: The Inside Story of America's...
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Todd A. Henry ed., "Queer Korea" (Duke UP, 2025)
Edited by Todd A. Henry, Queer Korea (Duke UP, 2020) offers a vital and long-overdue examination of this subject. More than an academic text, it is a powerful collection that brings to light the hidden histories of non-normative sexuality and gender expression on the Korean Peninsula. The book...
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Stephanie K. Kim, "Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul" (MIT Press, 2023)
Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul (MIT Press, 2023) challenges the popular image of the international student in the American imagination, an image of affluence, access, and privilege. In this provocative book, higher...
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Benoit Berthelier and Immanuel Kim, "Hidden Heros: Anthology of North Korean FIction" (Anthem, 2025)
Hidden Heroes (Anthem Press, 2025) offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK…
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Zev Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chinese. In southern China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, people used Chinese to read and write–and never thought it was odd. It was, after all, how things...
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Gregory N. Evon, "Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910)" (Cambria Press, 2023)
Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Buddhist studies and premodern Korean literary history. Gregory N. Evon’s book unfolds in two parts: the first charts the history of the place…
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Fyodor Tertitskiy, "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" (Hurst UP, 2025)
The Kims, of North Korea, are perhaps the 21st century’s most successful family dictatorship–if only due to sheer longevity, having run North Korea for the almost eight decades since the country’s post-war founding. Kim Il-Sung led North Korea for over half that time, from its founding in 1948 to...
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Ryan Klejment-Lavin, "Evil: A North Korean Christian Refugee Perspective" (American Society of Missiology, 2024)
The purpose of Evil: A North Korean Christian Refugee Perspective (American Society of Missiology, 2024) is to describe how the North Korean refugee understanding of evil can shape missionary practice in the Korean Peninsula. The central research question guiding this study is, How do North…
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Christopher Hanscom, "Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2024)
How does art engage with its social context? What does 'the politics of art' even mean? In his new book Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2023), Christopher P. Hanscom takes on these questions in the context of...
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Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese. In medieval East Asia, the written...
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Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of Seoul’s middle class, producing in its wake the “dialectical images” of the modern city described by Walter Benjamin: sweet dreams and nightmares,...
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Kornel Chang, "A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under U.S. Occupation" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Four decades of Japanese colonialism in Korea ended abruptly in August 1945. It took three weeks for U.S. troops to arrive, which started almost three years of U.S. military occupation. By the end of the occupation, Korea was permanently divided into North and South, with Seoul set on an...
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Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn, "Umma: A Korean Mom's Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes" (America's Test Kitchen, 2025)
When America’s Test Kitchen social media manager Sarah Ahn started her website Ahnest Kitchen to showcase her mother’s cooking via real-time videos of their home life, her work resonated with millions on Instagram and TikTok. Ahn’s experience living at home with her immigrant parents…
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Tycho van der Hoog, "Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa" (Hurst, 2025)
North Korea was an important player in the decolonisation of Africa. Freedom fighters across the continent received vital assistance from Pyongyang, and almost all southern African independence leaders travelled to the North Korean capital at some point, in search of support. This alliance has...
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Joseph A. Seeley, "Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Icy, unpredictable, and treacherous, the dangers of the Yalu River were heightened in the twentieth century when it became the longest non-maritime border of the Japanese Empire. Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan’s Empire in Korea and Manchuria (Cornell University Press, 2024)...
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Hye Seung Chung, "Cinema Under National Reconstruction: State Censorship and South Korea's Cold War Film Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
Cinema under National Reconstruction (Rutgers UP, 2024) calls for a revisionist understanding of state film censorship during successive Cold War military regimes in South Korea (1961-1988). Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive's digitized database and framing South Korean...
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Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
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…
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Seungsook Moon, "Civic Activism in South Korea: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism" (Columbia UP, 2024)
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...
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Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)
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.…
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Willingness for climate action in South Korea and Finland: A cross-cultural comparison
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...
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Sixiang Wang, "Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China" (Columbia UP, 2023)
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…
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Victor D. Cha, "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea" (Columbia UP, 2024)
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...
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Timothy Gitzen, "Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses" (Helsinki UP, 2023)
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,...
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Tristan A. Volpe, "Leveraging Latency: How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclear Technology" (Oxford UP, 2023)
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…
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Russell Thomas, "Tofu: A Culinary History" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
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...
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Park Jeong-Mi, "The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea" (U California Press, 2024)
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...
About this show
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/korean-studies
Hosted by
New Books Network