시간 Shi gan [Time], 2006. 김기덕/金基德 KIM Ki-duk. Starring 하정우 HA Jeong-woo, 성현아/成賢娥 SEONG Hyeon-ah.

Reasonably creepy (I mean, it wasn't Oldboy, but it was quite a change from Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom) Korean film about a whacked out girlfriend who is terrified her boyfriend is bored of her and going to get rid of her, thus disappears ( Read more... )

태극기 휘날리며 Taegukgi Hwinallimyo [Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War], 2004. Dir. 강제규/姜帝圭 KANG Je-gyu. Perf. 장동건/張東健 JANG Dong-geon, 원빈/元斌 WON Bin ( Read more... )

봄여름가을겨울그리고봄 Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom [Spring, Summer , Fall, Winter ... and Spring], 2003. Dir. 金基德/김기덕 KIM Ki-dŏk. Acted OH Yeong-su, KIM Young-min, SEO Jae-kyeong, HA Yeo-jin, KIM Jong-ho.


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Richard E. Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

The professor I TA'd for this past quarter recommended this book to me, saying she thought of designing a course just so she could use this. It was really, really wonderful - reminded me some of And So Flows History, though entirely lacking ( Read more... )

Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, trans. Yair Reiner, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag (New York: Basic Books, 2001).


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Michael Weiner, The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, 1910-1923 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989).Weiner's introduction states that at the time of writing, Koreans made up 85% of the total foreign residents of Japan, at numbers around 700,000. He notes that while the majority were born in Japan & speak Japanese, they do not ( Read more... )

Chong-sik Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria: the Japanese Experience, 1931-1940 (Santa Monica: The Rand Corp., 1967).

The publisher & timing of this book should make it obvious why it was commissioned; it's half 'history,' half translated documents (the history portion is sort of a summation of the documents, so it does whack you over the head a ( Read more... )

Park Hyun Ok, Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).

Another book I'm pretty fond of, extremely ambitious (and the 'origins of the North Korean revolution' aspect of the title is, in my opinion, far overstated). We do see the 'dream' of ( Read more... )

Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).One of my favorite books, more so after I've read a number of other works on Japanese empire building in Korea. The explication of the complex interplay between Korea, Japan, and China - with Korea taking center stage - is sort of unmatched in any other work ( Read more... )

Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Along with Korea Between Empires and Two Dreams in One Bed, I think this provides a nice little trio to survey Japanese-Korean relations in the late 19th/early 20th century - all three from different angles. Duus is ( Read more... )