Reviews
South Korean Identity: The Return of Ethnic Exclusivism?
It is both necessary and interesting to take regular snapshots of identity. South Korea just did so. The “Korean identity survey” was conducted for the third time in 2015, and the results have now been published. Steven Denney parses the data.
Yongusil 88: Borders and Belonging at the 2016 Joint East Asian Studies Conference at SOAS
Markus Bell and the Sino-NK team review Korea-focused presentations from the Joint East Asian Studies Conference (JEAS), hosted by the University of London’s SOAS from September 7-9.
Occupation at the Local Level: Kim Dong-choon on Korean War Atrocities
In an extensive new review essay, Adam Cathcart offers a sweeping assessment of Kim Dong-choon’s 2009 text on the Korean War, reinvigorating debate over both Korean War history and the societal tensions that come with it.
A Roundtable Review of Il Hyun Cho’s Global Rogues and Regional Orders: The Multidimensional Challenge of North Korea and Iran
Il Hyun Cho argues that the “rogue state” narrative is not wholly global, but is largely a creation of US security concerns in tandem with the role conceptions of regional actors. Van Jackson and Daniel Wertz consider the proposition in this roundtable review.
Identity, Security, and the Nation: Understanding the South Korean Response to North Korean Defectors
In this review essay, Dr. Sarah Son summarizes her contribution to an Asian Ethnicity special issue (Spring 2016) on North Koreans in South Korea. Her work explores the simultaneous portrayal of this group as both “us” and “them” in public policy discourse.
Local and Limited: The Sociopolitical Implications of Segmented Marketization in North Korea
In the fifth part of our contemporary marketization series, Philo Kim takes a sociologist’s lens to the North Korean economy to find out why marketization hasn’t led to large-scale change or transformation.
A Roundtable Review of Hyun Ok Park’s The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea
Capital — it’s what lies beneath, argues sociologist Hyun Ok Park in her new transnational history of Korea. Meeting Park’s hefty tome head on, a Toronto-based historian and the Sino-NK team consider the work’s main claim, along with a number of thematic tributaries.
Yongusil 82: Not So Hellish After All
Courting the French audience, Steven Denney published an article in the journal Korea Analysis about popular memes used to express a sense of political and socioeconomic frustration in South Korea. Here we recap his findings.
A Roundtable Review of Hazel Smith’s Markets and Military Rule
How unique is North Korea? A quartet of contributions from Rudiger Frank, Georgy Toloraya, Christopher Green, and Robert Winstanley-Chesters address this question, via review of an important new book.
