Books in the Center For Korea Studies Publications series

From 1966 through 1981 the Peace Corps sent more than two thousand volunteers to South Korea, to teach English and provide healthcare. A small yet significant number of them returned to the United States and entered academia, forming the core of a second wave of Korean studies scholars. How did their experiences in an impoverished nation still recovering from war influence their intellectual orientation and choice of study¿and Korean studies itself?In this volume, former volunteers who became scholars of the anthropology, history, and literature of Korea reflect on their experiences during the period of military dictatorship, on gender issues, and on how random assignments led to lifelong passion for the country. Two scholars who were not volunteers assess how Peace Corps service affected the development of Korean studies in the United States. Kathleen Stephens, the former US ambassador to the Republic of Korea and herself a former volunteer, contributes an afterword.

In recent years, discussion of the colonial period in Korea has centered mostly on the degree of exploitation or development that took place domestically, while international aspects have been relatively neglected. Colonial discourse, such as characterization of Korea as a ¿hermit nation,¿ was promulgated around the world by Japan and haunts us today. The colonization of Korea also transformed Japan and has had long-term consequences for post¿World War II Northeast Asia as a whole.Through sections that explore Japan¿s images of Korea, colonial Koreans¿ perceptions of foreign societies and foreign relations, and international perceptions of colonial Korea, the essays in this volume show the broad influence of Japanese colonialism not simply on the Korean peninsula, but on how the world understood Japan and how Japan understood itself. When initially incorporated into the Japanese empire, Korea seemed lost to Japan¿s designs, yet Korean resistance to colonial rule, along with later international fear of Japanese expansion, led the world to rethink the importance of Korea as a future sovereign nation.

Charles R. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the University of Wisconsin¿Madison. Jungwon Kim is King Sejong Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Hwasook Nam is an independent scholar who previously served as the James B. Palais Endowed Associate Professor at the University of Washington. Serk-Bae Suh is associate professor of Korean studies at the University of California, Irvine. The other contributors are Jung-hwan Cheon, Ho Kim, Sun-Chul Kim, Yerim Kim, George Kallander, Franklin Rausch, Youngju Ryu, and Young Chae Seo.

Through the use of storytelling, linguistic analysis, and journal entries from turn-of-the-century missionaries and traveling Russians in addition to many varieties of unconventional primary sources, the contributors creatively explore unfamiliar terrain while examining the culture, identity, and regional distinctiveness of the northern region and its people.

Spaces of Possibility, which arose from a 2012 conference held at the University of WashingtonΓÇÖs Simpson Center for the Humanities, engages with spaces in, between, and beyond the national borders of Japan and Korea. Some of these spaces involve the ambiguous longings and aesthetic refigurings of the past in the present, the social possibilities that emerge out of the seemingly impossible new spaces of development, the opportunities of genre, and spaces of new ethical subjectivities. Museums, colonial remains, new architectural spaces, graffiti, street theater, popular song, recent movies, photographic topography, and translated literature all serve as keys for unlocking the ambiguous and contradictoryΓÇöyet powerfulΓÇöemotions of spaces, whether in Tokyo, Seoul, or New York.

Highlights the complex inter-action between indigenous activity and colonial governance, emphasizing how Japanese rule adapted to Korean and missionary initiatives

Examines the rationale and ideals behind Park's philosophy of national development

Through the use of storytelling, linguistic analysis and journal entries from turn-of-the-century missionaries and traveling Russians in addition to many varieties of unconventional primary sources, this book explores unfamiliar terrain while examining the culture, identity and regional distinctiveness of the northern region and its people.