The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature

Heekyoung Cho is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the author of Translation’s Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature. Her articles discuss topics on translation and the creation of modern fiction, translation and censorship, serial publication, world literature, and webcomics. Her current research focuses on seriality in cultural production in both old and new media, including digital serialization and transmedial production, as well as graphic narratives and media platforms.

Introduction—"Redefined and Challenged: Anthologizing Korean Literary Studies"

Heekyoung Cho

Part I. Premodern and Early Modern Korean Literature

Section I. Manuscript Culture, Materiality, Performativity






Manuscript, Not Print, in the Book World of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910)
Si Nae Park




Performing Vernacular: Textual Practices as Bodily Events in Premodern Korea
Hwisang Cho

Section II. Print, Medium, Transregional Interactions




Books for the Illiterate: the Haengsil-to (Illustrated Guide for Moral Deeds) of Chosŏn Korea
Young Kyun Oh




Print and Transnational Referentiality: Nam Kong-ch’ŏl’s Printing of Kŭmnŭng chip
Suyoung Son

Section III. Novel, Gender Dynamics, Transgression




The Elite Vernacular Korean Culture of Chosŏn (1392-1910): Indeterminacy, Hybridity, Strangeness
Ksenia Chizhova




Lovesickness and Death in Seventeenth-Century Korean Literature
Janet Yoon-sun Lee

Section IV. Language and Writing, Vernacular, Hybridity




Idu in and as Korean Literature
Ross King




Hybrid Orthographies and the Emergence of Modern Literature in Early Twentieth-Century Korea
Daniel Pieper



Part II. Modernity and the Colonial Period

Section I. Gender and Sexuality




Capital, Gender, and Modernity in Colonial Korean Literature
Kelly Y. Jeong




Sexual Violence and Its Ideological Labor: Imagining Masculinist Equality and Androcentric Ethnos in Colonial Korean Literature
Jin-kyung Lee

Section II. Translation and Crossing




Incongruent Reflections: Translation and Bilingual Writings in Colonial Korea
Yoon Jeong Oh




The Japanese "Café France": Chŏng Chi-yong and Self-Translation
David Krolikoski


Nonsense As Sensibility: The Importance of Not Being Earnest in Colonial Korea and Taiwan
Evelyn Shih



Section III. Modernity and Coloniality




Language, Science, and the Status of Truth in Late Colonial Korea
Christopher P. Hanscom




A Minor Modernist’s Conundrum of Representation: Kim Saryang and the Colonized I-Novel
Nayoung Aimee Kwon




Rewriting the City: Yi Sang, Architecture, and the Figure of the Department Store
Jina E. Kim

Section IV. Art and Politics




A Forgotten Aesthetic: Reportage in Colonial Korea, 1920s–1930s
Sunyoung Park




Literature (chŏnhyang sosŏl) and the Inward Gaze in the Late Colonial Period
Mi-Ryong Shim



Part III. Liberation and Contemporary Korean Literature

Section I. Decolonization, Cold War, Humanism




Decolonizing Literature: Bridging Political Divides in the Post-Liberation Period
Jonathan Glade




Vitalism and Existentialism in Early South Korean Literature
Jae Won Edward Chung




Humanism as a Problem of Empire in Modern Korean Literature
Travis Workman

Section II. Politics, Memory, Orality




Gender and Class Dynamics in the Utilitarian Discourse of the Developmental State and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea
Serk-Bae Suh




(Dis)embodiment of Memory: Gender, Memory, and Ethics in Human Acts by Han Kang
Ji-Eun Lee




Continuing Orality in Korean Poetry: Opening a P’an for the Page
Ivanna Sang Een Yi

Section III. Race, Diaspora, Intersectionality




Ŏmma’s Baby, Appa’s Maybe: Black Amerasian Children and the Layers of Diaspora
Jang Wook Huh




Intersecting Korean Diasporas
Christina Yi




Whose Korea is it? Reading Zainichi Literature Intersectionally
Cindi Textor



Section IV. Division and North Korean Literature




Closed Borders and Open Letters in the Cold War Koreas
I Jonathan Kief




A Good Wife is Hard to Find: North Korean Women in Fiction
Immanuel Kim




Children’s Literature in South and North Korea
Dafna Zur



Part IV. Queer Studies, World Literature, the Digital Humanities

Section I. Queer Reading and Affect




Forms of Attachment: Ardent Female Intimacies in 1920s Korea
Samuel Perry




The Poet and the Theater: Perverse Reading and Queer Poetry
Ungsan Kim

Section II. World Literature, Global Connections, the Digital Humanities




World Literature, Korean Literature, and the Medical and Health Humanities
Karen Thornber




Global Korea and World Literature
Jenny Wang Medina




The Text-Mining of Culture: The Case of a Popular Magazine in 1930s Korea

Jae-Yon Lee and Hyun-Joo Kim

Appendix: A Comprehensive List of English Translations of Korean Literature

Hyokyoung Yi