Note from the Editors

We continue to be gratified by the burgeoning growth of the Korea field in the English-speaking world, and that The Journal of Korean Studies continues to benefit from this growth in receiving more and better submissions each year. This issue contains seven articles on everything from South Korea’s democratic transition, to rural cooperatives in Colonial Korea, to historical memory in seventeenth-century Chosŏn. We are pleased to be able to include—following last fall’s thematic issue on the Korean Armistice guest edited by Charles Armstrong—two review essays discussing a number of the recent academic books on North Korea.

The article submissions and book review copies continue to come in at such a pace and with such quality that we are beginning to develop a backlog as our fat volumes are pushing the page limit our publisher is willing to accommodate. Books worthy of review are beginning to make our bookshelf groan as we struggle to find reviewers. So take pity on us and agree to vet a submission or two or to review a couple of books.

As usual we look forward this year to a fall thematic issue. This year’s issue is guest edited by Jennifer Chun and Judy Han on “Gender and Politics in Contemporary Korea.” The South Korean electorate has graciously agreed to support our volume by electing Park Keun-hye, Korea’s first female ruler since the seventh century. In 2015, we look forward to Ted Hughes and Jina Kim’s edited volume on “Korean Culture, New Media, and Digital Humanities.”