Project MUSE®: Journal of Korean Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Korean Studies.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1969-1971); vol. 1 (1979) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Korean StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Korean Studies2158-16650731-1613Latest articles in Journal of Korean Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editorial Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989421
<p></p>
We are very excited to begin our tenure as the new editors of The Journal of Korean Studies with the publication of volume 31, issue 1. We would like to first express our deep gratitude to Dr. Jisoo Kim for shepherding the journal so effectively since 2019. By leading the journal with vision and integrity, Dr. Kim established the model we hope to emulate. Under her leadership, JKS has ensured the highest standards of academic research and publication in the field of Korean studies. We are also thankful to the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center for institutional support. The return to Stanford is a meaningful home-coming as JKS was housed at Shorenstein APARC when Gi-Wook
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallEditorial Note2026-04-30text/htmlen-USEditorial Note2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®27212026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Toward an Archival and Post-Nationalist History of Korea: A Roundtable on the Scholarly Impact of Carter Eckert
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989422
<p></p>
Roundtable date: February 21, 2025Thank you everyone for joining us today. My name is Sungik Yang, and I am an assistant professor of history at Arizona State University. I would like to thank Hyung-Gu Lynn, the AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research at the University of British Columbia, for co-organizing this event.This roundtable is being held to commemorate Carter J. Eckert, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History at Harvard University, who passed away on December 13, 2024. Given his stature in the field of Korean history, we thought it would be appropriate to hold this roundtable to reflect on Carter’s contributions to our knowledge of Korea’s modern past and to the field of Korean studies at large. Through
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallToward an Archival and Post-Nationalist History of Korea: A Roundtable on the Scholarly Impact of Carter Eckert2026-04-30text/htmlen-USToward an Archival and Post-Nationalist History of Korea: A Roundtable on the Scholarly Impact of Carter Eckert2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®825662026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Memory, Archives, History: The Intellectual Legacies of Carter J. Eckert
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989423
<p></p>
Memories are often unpredictable creatures. Some remain as vivid as if they had been magically preserved in some mnemonic amber, while others irretrievably drift away on life’s currents into the vast, roiling seas of forgotten thoughts and discarded dreams, rumored to be located somewhere deep within the temporal lobe.1 In writing this essay on the meanings of Carter Eckert’s scholarship for Korean studies, history, and epistemology, revisiting my own memories—recent and distant, vague and clear—as a starting point feels both natural and inevitable.Even decades later, I can recall with vivid, perhaps deceptive, sharpness the fading summer warmth in the Cambridge air that sunny, late-afternoon September day I first
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallMemory, Archives, History: The Intellectual Legacies of Carter J. Eckert2026-04-30text/htmlen-USMemory, Archives, History: The Intellectual Legacies of Carter J. Eckert2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1545832026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Infrastructural Dilemmas and State Capacity in Late Chosŏn Korea: Carts, Embassies, and Local Society
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989424
<p></p>
In a 1754 examination essay, Chosŏn scholar Sin Kyŏngjun 申景濬 (1712–1781) argued that while the construction of carts (sure 車) was the work of artisans, it was equally essential for scholars to understand and study the subject too. Citing Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200), he wrote: “Master Zhu remarked that although matters such as sacrificial vessels made of bamboo and wood [pyŏndu 籩豆] are to be attended to by designated officials, scholars should nonetheless not remain ignorant of them. Accordingly, the work of artisans, too, is a subject of investigation [kyŏngmul 格物] for Confucian scholars such as ourselves.”1 From the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, groups of scholar-officials in Korea indeed made
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallInfrastructural Dilemmas and State Capacity in Late Chosŏn Korea: Carts, Embassies, and Local Society2026-04-30text/htmlen-USInfrastructural Dilemmas and State Capacity in Late Chosŏn Korea: Carts, Embassies, and Local Society2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1161982026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Roles and Challenges of Legal Officials During King Chŏngjo’s Reign
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989425
<p></p>
This study reexamines the roles and challenges of yulgwan 律官 (hereafter referred to as “legal officials”) within the judicial system during the reign of King Chŏngjo (正祖 r. 1776–1800).1 Despite their seemingly minor bureaucratic status, legal officials served as key intermediaries in the application of law, including interpreting statutes, drafting legal documents, and offering advice on judicial matters. As earlier studies on Chosŏn legal history have focused primarily on high-ranking officials or institutional reforms, the roles and experiences of legal officials have remained almost underexplored.2Studies, such as Yi Namhŭi’s research on the status of legal officials in early Chosŏn and Na Yŏnghun’s analysis on
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallRoles and Challenges of Legal Officials During King Chŏngjo’s Reign2026-04-30text/htmlen-USRoles and Challenges of Legal Officials During King Chŏngjo’s Reign2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1289612026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Suspicious Deaths: Contested Female Suicides in the Late Chosŏn Period
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989426
<p></p>
On the second day of the eleventh lunar month of 1902, the body of a young married woman from Sanch’ŏng Lesser County in southern Kyŏngsang Province was allegedly found hanging from the rafters in a shed beside a bamboo field.1 Madam Kim was around twenty years old at the time of her death and had only been married a few years to her husband Kwŏn Wŏnjung, who was from a family apparently with some local clout.2 Her father and uncle accused Wŏnjung of beating his wife to death with a mallet and then disguising it as a suicide by self-strangulation.3 Wŏnjung had gone into hiding while his mother Madam Yi, who testified that she had first discovered the body, denied that any foul play had been involved. Five inquest
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallSuspicious Deaths: Contested Female Suicides in the Late Chosŏn Period2026-04-30text/htmlen-USSuspicious Deaths: Contested Female Suicides in the Late Chosŏn Period2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1055412026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Ssial, Jeremiad, and Civil Religion
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989427
<p></p>
Civil religion, a term originally coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and later revisited and popularized by Robert Bellah and his followers, is a symbolic framework of beliefs and rituals revolving around the sacred identity of the political community.1 This phenomenon finds expression and commemoration in pivotal historical events and symbolic gestures, such as the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement, along with emblematic symbols like the national flag and ceremonial observances like the national anthem, all imbued with sublime meaning. In principle, civil religion grants individuals the ability to think as a sacred whole, allowing them to internalize the nation’s identity and make important decisions
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallSsial, Jeremiad, and Civil Religion2026-04-30text/htmlen-USSsial, Jeremiad, and Civil Religion2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1471962026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30History in Two Keys: The Battle of Pochonbo and the State Myth Surrounding It
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989428
<p></p>
In his examination of the Boxer Rebellion in Qing China, Paul A. Cohen identifies three facets of history: the events as they actually occurred, how they are remembered by the general public, and how they are interpreted by historians.1 Cohen’s book History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth uses this framework to analyze the rebellion, focusing on what happened, how participants and those affected by the rebellion remembered it, and how historiographies, including those of the People’s Republic of China, portrayed the event. This article adopts a similar, albeit slightly modified, approach to analyze a different historical event: the Battle of Pochonbo (Poch’ŏnbo). This raid, carried out on
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallHistory in Two Keys: The Battle of Pochonbo and the State Myth Surrounding It2026-04-30text/htmlen-USHistory in Two Keys: The Battle of Pochonbo and the State Myth Surrounding It2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1708792026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Highways to Coal Mines: South Korea’s Highland Road Construction for Household Fuel Transition, 1945–1962
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989429
<p></p>
In September 1953, less than two months after the armistice that ended the Korean War, several major newspapers reported on the impending shortage of household fuel in Seoul.1 The main reason for the fuel shortage was a transportation bottleneck. South Korean coal miners in Taebaek Coalfield, the mining heartland of South Korea, could not efficiently ship coal to cities because there were a limited number of roads in the region.2 Consequently, the mined coal was being stocked in freight yards around the mines, sometimes for several months, before finally being shipped. While nearly 240,000 tons of mined coal—roughly twice the estimated amount of winter fuel needed in Seoul—was waiting in yards to be carried away
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallHighways to Coal Mines: South Korea’s Highland Road Construction for Household Fuel Transition, 1945–19622026-04-30text/htmlen-USHighways to Coal Mines: South Korea’s Highland Road Construction for Household Fuel Transition, 1945–19622026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1524712026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Sewŏl Activism and the Changing Tenors and Tactics of Political Action in South Korea
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989430
<p></p>
MV Sewŏl capsized on the morning of April 16th, 2014 while en route to Jeju (Cheju) Island. The Sewŏl Disaster, now dubbed South Korea’s worst peacetime disaster, claimed 304 lives, 250 of whom were students from Tanwŏn High School on a field trip. As the entire nation came to witness the scene in real time as the ferry foundered, the staggering death toll did not owe to the sinking itself, but instead resulted from the gross negligence of the captain and the crew members (who were the first to escape while the passengers were repeatedly told to “stay put”) as well as the botched rescue operation by the Coast Guard. The Sewŏl ferry had breached several key safety regulations, making it practically the most
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallSewŏl Activism and the Changing Tenors and Tactics of Political Action in South Korea2026-04-30text/htmlen-USSewŏl Activism and the Changing Tenors and Tactics of Political Action in South Korea2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®932592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30A Study of the Relationship Between Middle-Class Identification and Welfare Attitudes in Korean Society: The Role of Homeownership and Asset Accumulation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989431
<p></p>
This study empirically analyzes the influence of homeownership and asset accumulation on self-perceptions of being middle class in Korean society. Previous research on middle-class identification has tended to focus on how a particular housing status, such as homeownership or related consumption patterns, affect middle-class identification. However, with growing interest in household financialization and the cultural entrenchment of asset accumulation through financial market participation, there is a need to empirically examine how such asset accumulation affects perceptions of the middle class. In the context of inadequate public welfare provisions, asset accumulation through home ownership can be interpreted as
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallA Study of the Relationship Between Middle-Class Identification and Welfare Attitudes in Korean Society: The Role of Homeownership and Asset Accumulation2026-04-30text/htmlen-USA Study of the Relationship Between Middle-Class Identification and Welfare Attitudes in Korean Society: The Role of Homeownership and Asset Accumulation2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®1382392026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Creationism in a South Korean Culture: Science, Religion, and the Struggle Against Evolution by Hyung Wook Park (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989432
<p></p>
Half a century ago, when I was just beginning a career exploring Korean history and culture, there were so few academic books in English focused on Korea (with the exception of books on the Korean War) that we few Anglophones in the field felt that we should read every title we ran across. With the explosion of interest in Korea across the English-speaking world over the decades since then, that is no longer possible. Instead, we have to pick and choose from among the many interesting books that appear in our libraries or on publishers’ tables at conferences. We often assume a glance at a title alone is enough to tell us whether that book is relevant to what we are focused on and is therefore worth spending the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallCreationism in a South Korean Culture: Science, Religion, and the Struggle Against Evolution by Hyung Wook Park (review)2026-04-30text/htmlen-USCreationism in a South Korean Culture: Science, Religion, and the Struggle Against Evolution by Hyung Wook Park (review)2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®180292026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Korean Pop Culture Beyond Asia: Race and Reception ed. by David C. Oh and Benjamin M. Han (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989433
<p></p>
Oh and Han’s Korean Pop Culture Beyond Asia: Race and Reception provides much-needed nuance on the Hallyu wave of South Korean popular culture as it is consumed by audiences outside of the Asian context. The editors first develop their key terminology, “racial translocalism,” which situates the reader to the purpose of this volume. Rather than overgeneralizing the dissemination of Korean popular media across cultures, the editors set up each author to pay special attention to the locally specific racial standpoint of their community of study.This is a critical volume, which faces head-on the way racial identities and local cultural norms matter in the cosmopolitan project of Korean media reception. Starting from
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallKorean Pop Culture Beyond Asia: Race and Reception ed. by David C. Oh and Benjamin M. Han (review)2026-04-30text/htmlen-USKorean Pop Culture Beyond Asia: Race and Reception ed. by David C. Oh and Benjamin M. Han (review)2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®83422026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30Millennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance by Suk-Young Kim (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434
<p></p>
Aiming to overcome the challenges of researching contemporary society in the so-called hermit kingdom, Suk-Young Kim investigates how North Koreans have been exposed to and reacted to glimpses of the outside world through the screens of digital communication devices, especially cell phones. In her engagingly titled Millennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance, she embarks on an analysis of social change, network formation, and bottom-up market activity involving North Korean communication technologies and the South Korean media content they illicitly spread. Blending and bending the disciplinary dimensions of cultural anthropology, literary and film analysis, and media studies, as
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989434">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/515/image/coversmallMillennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance by Suk-Young Kim (review)2026-04-30text/htmlen-USMillennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance by Suk-Young Kim (review)2026-04-302026TWOProject MUSE®194212026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-30