Chong Young-hwan – The Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ Issue and the 1965 System: Comfort Women of the Empire and Two-fold Historical Revisionism (pages 201-227)

Volume 19.1

Abstract Since its publication in 2013, Park Yuha’s book Comfort Women of the Empire (Cheguk ŭi wianbu) has become a major point of contention for those concerned with the “comfort women” issue. However, while this book has been frequently cited amidst the recent maelstrom of Japan–Korea relations, the actual content of the book has received…

Min Koo Choi – The Creation of the Modern Individual in Modern Korean Literature: Kim Tong-in’s Novella Mau˘ m i yo˘ t’un chayo˘ (A Person with a Weak Heart, 1919–1920) (pages 103-123)

Volume 19.1

Abstract Kim Tong-in (1900–1951) strove to not only refine the form of the modern novel but also to create a new type of modern individual character. This paper examines Kim Tong-in’s novella Maŭm i yŏt’un chayŏ (A Person with a Weak Heart, 1919–1920), which draws on the modern Korean intellectual’s self-portrait of the inner self…

Mikwi Cho – Koreans across the Sea: Migration of Laborers to the Metropole, 1910–1937 (pages 161-200)

Volume 19.1

Abstract This paper is concerned with Korean farmers who were transformed into laborers during the Korean colonial period and migrated to Japan to enhance their living conditions. The author’s research adopts a regional scale to its investigation in which the emergence of Osaka as a global city attracted Koreans seeking economic betterment. The paper shows…

Gooyong Kim – From Hybridity of Cultural Production to Hyperreality of Post-feminism in K-pop: A Theoretical Reconsideration for Critical Approaches to Cultural Assemblages in Neoliberal Culture Industry (pages 125-159)

Volume 19.1

Abstract This paper evaluates a current discourse of cultural hybridity that is deployed to examine the global success of local popular culture from South Korea. Indicating the discourse is descriptive without retaining an explanatory merit, I propose an alternative perspective based on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and hyperreality, while focusing on the political economy…

Dongwoo Yim – Rise and Fall of the Microdistrict in Pyongyang, North Korea (pages 73-85)

Volume 19.1

Abstract Recent residential developments in Pyongyang (P’yŏngyang) show a pattern distinguished from previous eras in the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il periods. Since Kim Jong Un’s rise to power, major developments, such as the Mirae Scientist Street and Ryomyong Street developments, resemble real estate developments in other capitalist cities. Instead of repeating the…

Annie Pedret – Imagination as a Research Method: Spatial Futures for Pyongyang in 2050 (15-54)

Volume 19.1

Abstract Conventional methods are necessary for addressing certain types of problems, but they are inadequate for investigating subjects that cannot be known in an increasingly complex and emergent world. The method proposed in this paper acknowledges the role of imagination as a cognitive function involved in all human activities from perception and reasoning to experiment…

Robert Winstanley-Chesters – Ruins, Memory and Vibrant Matter: Imagining Future North Korean Rural Terrains (pages 87-101)

Volume 19.1

Abstract With recent work in mind from the fields of Critical and Human Geography and Philosophy on webs of political life and ruins as lively matters, in process and becoming the paper considers the futures for North Korean non-urban landscapes from a temporal (and spatial) frame beyond that of Pyongyang’s present. Following a change of…