Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race (Rutgers UP, 2025) by Dr. Min Joo Lee explores the romantic relationships between Korean men and women who were inspired by romantic Korean televisual depictions of Korean masculinity to travel to Korea as tourists. Dr. Lee argues that disparate racialized erotic desires of Korean pop culture fans, foreign tourists to Korea, Korean men, and the Korean nation converge to configure the interracial and transnational relationships between these tourists and Korean men. Lee observes how racial prejudices are developed and manifested through interracial and transnational intimate desires and encounters. This book is the first to examine the interracial relationships between Hallyu tourists and Korean men. Furthermore, it is the first to analyze Korea as a popular romance tourist destination for heterosexual women. Finding Mr. Perfect illuminates South Korean popular culture’s transnational fandom and tourism as a global phenomenon where fantasies and realities converge to have a tangible impact on individual lives.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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In the past decade, feminism has become one of the heated topics in public debate in South Korea. Feminism is embraced by activists, attacked in election campaigns, and increasingly framed as the source of conflict between men and women. In this episode, Outi Luova talks to Katri Kauhanen to trace the historicity behind the contemporary debates and to ask why the history of the women’s movement still matters today.

Drawing on insights from Kauhanen’s recently published dissertation, titled Re-examining the Women’s Movement in Cold War South Korea and Beyond: The History of the Korean National Council of Women, we discuss the history of the women’s movement in authoritarian era South Korea through the lens of the Council, conceptualize Cold War feminism and consider how the Cold War era archives of the international women’s movement can also serve the research on Asian women’s activism.

Our guest, Katri Kauhanen from the Center of East Asian Studies, University of Turku, is a Doctor of Social Sciences whose work explores Korean history, history of the women’s movements and the transnational networks and discourses through which women organized, collaborated, and articulated agency during the Cold War.

Outi Luova is a senior university lecturer at the Center of East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland.

Link to the thesis

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) and Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2025) explores literary texts that countered the prevailing rhetoric of South Korea’s exploitative developmental state. These texts capture moments of anti-utilitarian sacrifice, and include Kim Hyŏn’s critical essays, Pak Sangnyung’s monumental novel A Study of Death (1975), and Ko Chŏnghǔi’s poems about the Passion of Jesus.

In Against the Chains of Utility, Serk-Bae Suh challenges the notion of utilitarian sacrifice, which continues to pervade every aspect of Korean society. He argues that any act of sacrifice for a higher cause is inherently utilitarian, regardless of whether its motives are morally sound or questionable. Such sacrifices establish a circuit of exchange, where sacrifice is valued solely based on its ability to achieve an end. To counter this instrumentalization, anti-utilitarian sacrifice must exist as a means without an end. Suh posits that literature’s relevance to society lies in this seemingly nihilistic sacrifice, viewing literature not as a proxy for politics but as the art of imagination in language.

Dr. Serk-Bae Suh is an associate professor in East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He primarily studies modern Korean literature, and the underlying concern that guides his research issues from the inescapable human condition of being with others. He is also the author of Treacherous Translation: Culture, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Korea and Japan from the 1910s to the 1960s. View his university profile at https://www.faculty.uci.edu/pr....

Buy Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea:

https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/tit...

About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at [email protected]

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After nearly four decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, threats, and backdoor channels, the United States has failed to stop North Korea's nuclear program which now has the capability to strike American cities with weapons of mass destruction. In Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea (Yale UP, 2025), Joel S. Wit explains why US efforts to contain North Korea have not worked and gives readers a front-row seat to the policy debates, diplomatic deals, and secret talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

Wit, a former State Department official, takes readers to the front lines of nuclear negotiations and recounts how perilously close the United States and North Korea have come, on various occasions, to nuclear confrontation. Based on more than three hundred interviews with officials in Washington, Beijing, and Seoul, as well as with the author’s contacts in Pyongyang, this book chronicles how six American presidents have approached the problem of North Korea.
Wit points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for the failure to halt North Korea’s march to build a nuclear arsenal, since it was under their successive tenures that Pyongyang acquired the ability to threaten every city in North America. Wit also offers an unparalleled portrait of Kim Jong Un that refutes his caricature as impulsive and illogical. Like his father and his grandfather, Kim is a ruthless despot but also a canny and informed negotiator determined to secure his dictatorship’s future by exploring diplomacy or, failing that, by building a nuclear arsenal.

Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on his first book which examines the high price that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were willing to pay in order to achieve total victory in World War II. He can be reached at [email protected] or via his website. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components. 

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Edited by Todd A. Henry, Queer Korea (Duke UP, 2020) offers a vital and long-overdue examination of this subject. More than an academic text, it is a powerful collection that brings to light the hidden histories of non-normative sexuality and gender expression on the Korean Peninsula.

The book challenges the notion that queerness is a recent, Western import. Instead, it uncovers a rich and complex history of same-sex unions and diverse identities—stories that have too often been silenced or strategically used to reinforce nationalistic and patriarchal ideals. It also explores how media and society, from the colonial era to the present day, have deployed discourses of deviance as a means of control and assimilation.

What makes Queer Korea especially compelling is that it is not the work of one voice alone, but a union effort of many dedicated scholars who have each contributed their expertise to the field. Together, they create a multidimensional picture of queer life in Korea, bridging personal narratives, historical analysis, and cultural critique.

Queer Korea is essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Korean history. It highlights struggles for visibility, the quiet resilience of “under-the-radar” communities, and the surprising ways queer lives have helped shape the nation’s cultural and social landscape. Above all, it reminds us that queer history is not separate, but deeply woven into the very fabric of a country’s past.

A Personal Journey Behind the Book

The project grew not only out of academic curiosity, but also from Henry’s personal encounters and experiences in South Korea. These moments became the spark that inspired him to unearth stories too often overlooked. The journey of bringing the book to life was not without challenges, yet his determination to make these histories visible remained a powerful driving force. That personal investment—combined with the collective commitment of the contributing scholars—infuses the work with a depth and authenticity that makes Queer Korea resonate even more strongly.

Dr Todd A. Henry (PhD, UCLA, 2006; Assistant/Associate Professor, UCSD, 2009-Present) is a specialist of modern Korea with an interest in the period of Japanese rule (1910-1945) and its postcolonial afterlives (1945-). A social and cultural historian attuned to global forces that (re) produce lived spaces, he studies cross-border processes linking South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and the US in the creation of “Hot War” militarisms, the transpacific practice of medical sciences, and the lived experiences of heteropatriarchal capitalism. Also a historian of gender, sex, and sexuality, Dr. Henry seeks to expand Euro-American-centric approaches to queerness, transgenderism, and intersexuality through a sustained focus on Asian forms of embodiment that center the geopolitics of imperialism/colonialism, military occupation, and diasporic mobility.

Bing Wang receives her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2020. Her research interests include the exploration of overseas Chinese cultural identity and critical heritage studies. She is also a freelance translator.

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Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul (MIT Press, 2023) challenges the popular image of the international student in the American imagination, an image of affluence, access, and privilege. In this provocative book, higher education scholar Stephanie Kim argues that universities -- not the students -- create the paths that allow students their international mobility. Focusing on universities in the United States and South Korea that aggressively grew their student pools in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Kim shows the lengths to which universities will go to expand enrollments as they draw from the same pool of top South Korean students.

Using ethnographic research gathered over a ten-year period in which international admissions were impacted by the Great Recession, changes in US presidential administrations, and the COVID-19 pandemic, Constructing Student Mobility provides crucial insights into the purpose, effects, and future of student recruitment across the Pacific.

Constructing Student Mobility received the Best Book Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education Council on International Higher Education.

Stephanie Kim is a scholar, educator, author, and practitioner in the field of comparative and international higher education. She teaches at Georgetown University, where she is an Associate Professor of the Practice and Faculty Director of Higher Education Administration in the School of Continuing Studies. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the Asian Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service.

Leslie Hickman is a translator and writer. She has an MA in Korean Studies from Yonsei University. You can follow her activities here.

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Hidden Heroes (Anthem Press, 2025) offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK to describe the average citizen who navigates the complexities of daily life with quiet dedication for their work and country.

In this interview, Dr. Kim and Dr. Berthelier discuss the appeal of North Korean literature, their approach to translating the collection, and how sharing stories reminds readers of our shared humanity.

Dr. Benoit Berthelier is a senior lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sydney. His research interests include North Korea’s cultural industries and digital technologies. View his university profile here. 

Dr. Immanuel Kim is The Korea Foundation and Kim-Renaud Professor of Korean Literature and Culture Studies at George Washington University. His research focuses on the changes and development, particularly in the representations of women, sexuality, and memory, of North Korean literature from the 1960s to present day. View his university profile here. 

Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at [email protected]

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For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chinese. In southern China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, people used Chinese to read and write–and never thought it was odd. It was, after all, how things were done.

Even today, Cantonese speakers use Chinese characters to reflect their dialect with no issues, while kanji remains a key part of Japanese writing. Even in South Korea, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper uses Chinese characters for its title, even as most of Korea has turned to hangul.

Zev Handel talks about how classical Chinese came to dominate East Asia in his book Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (University of Washington Press, 2025). How do Chinese characters even work? How did Chinese script spread across the region? And what was it like to read and write in a language that you couldn’t even speak?

Zev Handel is professor of Chinese linguistics in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington. He is author of Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script and associate coeditor of Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Chinese Characters Across Asia. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Buddhist studies and premodern Korean literary history. Gregory N. Evon’s book unfolds in two parts: the first charts the history of the place, position, and status of Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea, charting how Buddhism went from being outright attacked to grudgingly tolerated. The second part looks at how this background and court intrigue led the Chosŏn official Kim Manjung 金萬重 (1637–1692) — someone typically thought of as a stalwart Neo-Confucian — to find value in Buddhism, so much so that he wove into his novel Lady Sa’s Journey to the South (Sassi namjŏng-gi 謝氏南征記) the idea that Buddhism might even hold the key to save Confucianism.

Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea should be of interest to those interested in the history of Buddhism, Chosŏn Korea, and premodern literature. It should particularly appeal to readers who might be more familiar with Kim Manjung’s more well-known work, A Nine Cloud Dream (Kuunmong 九雲夢). For such readers in particular, this book offers a new and more complex way to think about this author — and the place of Buddhism in early modern Korea.

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The Kims, of North Korea, are perhaps the 21st century’s most successful family dictatorship–if only due to sheer longevity, having run North Korea for the almost eight decades since the country’s post-war founding. Kim Il-Sung led North Korea for over half that time, from its founding in 1948 to Kim’s death in 1994.

But who was Kim Il-Sung? How did someone who spent most of his early years in nearby Manchuria end up running North Korea? And how was Kim able to not just secure his own position, but also the position of his son (and then, in turn, his grandson)?

Kim is the subject of Fyodor Tertitsky’s latest book, Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung (Hurst, 2025). Fyodor Tertitskiy has been living in South Korea for more than a decade, where he researches North Korean political, social and military history. He has authored several books in English and Korean, including Soviet-North Korean Relations During the Cold War (Routledge: 2024) and The North Korean Army: History, Structure, Daily Life (Routledge: 2023).

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Accidental Tyrant. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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