Abstract In the early 1950s, Europe was still marked by the chaos and trauma caused by the world war that had ravaged the continent. Sweden was an exception. Stubbornly clinging to its centuries-long neutrality policy to the extent possible, the country had been spared many horrors other countries had had to endure. With its industrial…
Abstract Cho Seung-bog was a Korean linguist and thinker who worked in Sweden. He had connections with both North and South Korea and was a pioneer in conducting the first comprehensive research and writing on the Korean language in Northern Europe. To date, his achievements have not yet been the subject of in-depth research. The…
Abstract This paper explores the overlooked antiwar activism of Cho Seung-bog (1922–2012), a Korean intellectual who publicly opposed the Korean War while residing in the United States. Drawing on Cho’s unpublished Japanese-language memoirs, diaries, and archival materials from Uppsala University, the study situates his activism within the broader contexts of Cold War politics, postcolonial nation……
Abstract This article reconstructs the transnational life and academic career of Cho Seung-bog (1922-2012)—a pioneering founder of Japanese and Korean studies in post-war Scandinavia—through a biographical and intellectual-historical lens. Tracing Cho’s trajectory from pre-war Manchuria and wartime Japan to Cold War America and neutral Sweden, it examines how his overlapping positionalities shaped… Members Please login for…
Abstract This special issue deals with the multifaceted roles of Professor Cho Seung-bog (Cho Sŭngbok 趙承福, 1922-2012), one of the founders of post-war Korean and Japanese studies in Sweden. Concurrently with his academic career, he was active in Korean diaspora sociopolitical movements, including those advocating peace, democratization and reunification of North and South Korea. This…
Abstract This paper illustrates the role of Seoul-based researchers within Japan’s efforts to expand fieldwork and scholarship into central Inner Mongolia, and the creation of the puppet state of Mengjiang (Mōkyō) in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Academics based at Keijō Imperial University (the antecedent institution to Seoul National University) made efforts to document…
Abstract In recent years digital populism has emerged in South Korea as a new type of political behavior, marked by the political use of the internet as both a form of political participation and an instrument of mobilization. Technological advances and the diffusion of social media have enabled social polarization, rooted in post-Asian Financial Crisis…
Introduction Debates on the causes of coalition (in)stability date back to more than a century ago; coalition governments have at times been referred to as “structurally weak and unstable” (Lowell, 1896), whereas others (Lijphart, 1994; Rokkan, 1970; Sartori, 1976) have repeatedly emphasised that “multi-party coalition systems are not necessarily unstable and ineffective”. Coalition-building has been…
Abstract In the late 1970s, North Korean propaganda began to increasingly idolize various members of the Kim Il Sung family. Among the hagiographies of the so-called bloodline of Mt. Paektu is that of Kim Jong Suk (1917–1949), the first wife of Kim Il Sung and the mother of Kim Jong Il. Although her cult has…