Abstract This article reconstructs the origins and development of the so-called Anti-Chosun Movement, a (progressive) movement to curb the power and shed light on the history of (conservative) mass media, from its origins in the mid-1990s to its politicization in the 2002 presidential elections. The development of Anti-Chosun reveals the intertwinement of journalism, activism, and…
Abstract The history of the terms and expressions associated with smallpox offers evidence aof semantic change and reflects both the internal and external worldviews of Korean people with regard to smallpox. In Korean shamanic language, smallpox is personified as gods known by various names with their own linguistic registers, personalities, and behaviors. The present paper…
Abstract Across 2019–2020 a number of South Korean TV competition shows branded their musical identity as “trot.” This term denotes a perceived genre of popular music considered normative to South Korea’s developmentalist decades and thereafter as the music of older generations, yet the surprise success of the TV shows seemingly indicated a younger uptake heralding…
Koreans had lived on the southern territory of the modern Russian Far East before the arrival of Russian pathfinders in these lands. Therefore, they are an indigenous population of the modern Primorye region in the Russia, although, in the nineteenth century the number of Koreans was relatively small in the south of the Russian Far…
Abstract In translation, carefully-crafted sentences are exposed to myriad dangers. This is because translators tend to prioritize syntactical fidelity at the expense of sequence, that is, the order of elements insofar as this relates to calculated progression, gradual disclosure of information, and cumulative development of meaning. But if sequence is turned around for the sake…
Abstract This paper presents a feminist ethnographic account of the gendered struggle for belonging in “multicultural” Korea through an in-depth case study of a Korean Muslim woman convert and her family. Centering the informant and her family’s narratives, I explore the gendered implications linked to her conversion to Islam, her sense of belonging and how…
Abstract This article demonstrates that the Russo-Japanese rivalry, far from being just another example of imperialist competition during the Age of Imperialism, can also serve as a useful case study of a diplomatic contest over a periphery between hegemonic powers. During this diplomatic tug-of-war, the Korean peninsula became the focal point of a contest between…
Abstract In the past few years, the South Korean film industry has released a growing number of Korean movies set in the colonial period. This essay focuses on how these films deal with the painful memory of occupation. More specifically, the analysis will be centered on two biopics with narratives that differ from what could…
Abstract The paper examines the Chosŏn government’s rapprochement with the Russian Empire performed against the backdrop of the British seizure of Kŏmundo (1885– 1887). Two attempts of Russo-Chosŏn rapprochement, carried out in the summer of 1885 and summer of 1886, are analyzed separately and against the wider geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia and on the…
Abstract The paper seeks to consider the confusion around what “Halal Food” is and what “Eating Halal Food” means in South Korea; and how it causes stereotyping of halal food and Muslim foodways in a South Korean context. The findings of this paper are obtained from ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with South Koreans and…