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…
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…
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…
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…
Abstract The possibility of reconciliation between the two Koreas and a potential change of the political regime in North Korea raises the question of the urban futures of North Korean cities, which at the moment serve as a stage for power consolidation through the monumental propaganda of the present regime. This paper examines an urban…
Abstract Focusing on the interplay between memory and place, this article examines the rationale behind the use of axonometric drawings (axons) in a geographical research study of the Tumen/Tuman River region encompassing the borders shared by China, Russia and North Korea. The concepts of “memory of place” and “place of memory” guide the structure of…
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…
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…
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…
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