Reading the Korean Cultural Landscape


Book Description

Cultural geography remains an uncommon field of study in Korea. However, Dr. Ryu here demonstrates the extent of its usefulness as a tool in seeking a new vision. He adapts his deep experience in cultural geography to Korea, with its long history of over 5,000 years and the complexity of its cultural phenomena. The author presents the many facets of the Korean landscape, with religious, folk, linguistic, rural and urban aspects examined. This is a book that reveals many interesting dynamics within the urban and rural environment, from the the village, to the town,




P'ungsu


Book Description

This book is a milestone in the history of academic research on the development and role of geomancy (fengshui in Chinese and p'ungsu in Korean) in Korean culture and society. As the first interdisciplinary work of its kind, it investigates many topics in geomancy studies that have never been previously explored, and contains contributions from a number of disciplines including geography, historical studies, environmental science, architecture, landscape architecture, religious studies, and psychoanalysis. While almost all books in English about geomancy are addressed to general readers as practical guides for divining auspicious locations, P'ungsu is a work of rigorous scholarship that documents, analyzes, and explains past and current practices of geomancy. Its readers will better understand the impact of geomancy on the Korean cultural landscape and appreciate the significant ecological principles embedded in the geomantic traditions of Korea; while researchers will discover new insights and inspirations for future research on geomancy not only in Korea, but in China and elsewhere.




The Culture of Fengshui in Korea


Book Description

The term Fengshui, which literally means 'wind and water, ' is the ancient Chinese art of selecting an auspicious site to provide the most harmonious relationship between human and earth. The term is generally translated as "geomancy," and has had a deep and extensive impact on Korean, Chinese, and other East Asian cultures. Hong-key Yoon's book explores the nature of geomantic principles and the culture of practicing them in Korean cultural contexts. Yoon first examines the nature and historical background of geomancy, geomantic principles for auspicious sites (houses, graves, and cities) and provides an interpretation of geomantic principles as practiced in Korea. Yoon looks at geomancy's influence on cartography, religion and philosophy, and urban development in both Korea and China. Finally, Yoon debates the role of geomancy in the iconographical warfare between Japanese colonialism and Korean nationalism as it affected the cultural landscape of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul.




The Korean Popular Culture Reader


Book Description

Over the past decade, Korean popular culture has become a global phenomenon. The "Korean Wave" of music, film, television, sports, and cuisine generates significant revenues and cultural pride in South Korea. The Korean Popular Culture Reader provides a timely and essential foundation for the study of "K-pop," relating the contemporary cultural landscape to its historical roots. The essays in this collection reveal the intimate connections of Korean popular culture, or hallyu, to the peninsula's colonial and postcolonial histories, to the nationalist projects of the military dictatorship, and to the neoliberalism of twenty-first-century South Korea. Combining translations of seminal essays by Korean scholars on topics ranging from sports to colonial-era serial fiction with new work by scholars based in fields including literary studies, film and media studies, ethnomusicology, and art history, this collection expertly navigates the social and political dynamics that have shaped Korean cultural production over the past century. Contributors. Jung-hwan Cheon, Michelle Cho, Youngmin Choe, Steven Chung, Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Stephen Epstein, Olga Fedorenko, Kelly Y. Jeong, Rachael Miyung Joo, Inkyu Kang, Kyu Hyun Kim, Kyung Hyun Kim, Pil Ho Kim, Boduerae Kwon, Regina Yung Lee, Sohl Lee, Jessica Likens, Roald Maliangkay, Youngju Ryu, Hyunjoon Shin, Min-Jung Son, James Turnbull, Travis Workman




New Dynamics in East Asian Politics


Book Description

Using a comparative and thematic approach, this textbook looks at key aspects of the new dynamics in East Asian politics: security, political economy and society.




Sitings


Book Description

Arranged around a set of provocative themes, the essays in this volume engage in the discussion from various critical perspectives on Korean geography. Part One, "Geographies of the (Colonial) City," focuses on Seoul during the Japanese colonial occupation from 1910–1945 and the lasting impact of that period on the construction of specific places in Seoul. In Part Two, "Geographies of the (Imagined) Village," the authors delve into the implications for the conceptions of the village of recent economic and industrial development. In this context, they examine both constructed space, such as the Korean Folk Village, and rural villages that were physically transformed through the processes of rapid modernization. The essays in "Geographies of Religion" (Part Three) reveal how religious sites are historically and environmentally contested as well as the high degree of mobility exhibited by sites themselves. Similarly, places that exist at the margins are powerful loci for the negotiation of identity and aspects of cultural ideology. The final section, "Geographies of the Margin," focuses on places that exist at the margins of Korean society. Contributors: Todd A. Henry, Jong-Heon Jin, Laurel Kendall, David J. Nemeth, Robert Oppenheim, Michael J. Pettid, Je-Hun Ryu, Jesook Song,Timothy R. Tangherlini, Sallie Yea.




Meeting Once More


Book Description

Examines the impact of adoptees on their birth country and birth families A great mobilization began in South Korea in the 1990s: adult transnational adoptees began to return to their birth country and meet for the first time with their birth parents—sometimes in televised encounters which garnered high ratings. What makes the case of South Korea remarkable is the sheer scale of the activity that has taken place around the adult adoptees' return, and by extension the national significance that has been accorded to these family meetings. Informed by the author’s own experience as an adoptee and two years of ethnographic research in Seoul, as well as an analysis of the popular television program "I Want to See This Person Again," which reunites families, Meeting Once More sheds light on an understudied aspect of transnational adoption: the impact of adoptees on their birth country, and especially on their birth families. The volume offers a complex and fascinating contribution to the study of new kinship models, migration, and the anthropology of media, as well as to the study of South Korea.




Ritual and Identity


Book Description

"To which extent is ritual involved in the formation of collective and personal identities? What are the mechanisms that are responsible for the (mostly pre-reflexive) constitution of identity in ritual; and - equally important - what are the strategies employed by social actors to actively influence and enhance these constitutive processes? In order to find answers to these essential questions, authors refer to case studies from their respective areas of field research such as Japan, Morocco, Taiwan, Korea, India, and the Azores. Kpping is professor of anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology at Heidelberg University and also guest-professor at Goldsmith College London. His research focusses on popular and folk-religious practices in Japan through the lens of performance theories. Leistle is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Ethnology at Heidelberg University. In his research focussing on Moroocan trance rituals he concentrates on theories of the phenomenology of perception.




The Culture of Fengshui in Korea


Book Description

The term Fengshui, which literally means 'wind and water,' is the ancient Chinese art of selecting an auspicious site to provide the most harmonious relationship between human and earth. The term is generally translated as 'geomancy,' and has had a deep and extensive impact on Korean, Chinese, and other East Asian cultures. Hong-key Yoon's book explores the nature of geomantic principles and the culture of practicing them in Korean cultural contexts. Yoon first examines the nature and historical background of geomancy, geomantic principles for auspicious sites (houses, graves, and cities) and provides an interpretation of geomantic principles as practiced in Korea. Yoon looks at geomancy's influence on cartography, religion and philosophy, and urban development in both Korea and China. Finally, Yoon debates the role of geomancy in the iconographical warfare between Japanese colonialism and Korean nationalism as it affected the cultural landscape of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul.




Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea


Book Description

South Korea (Republic of Korea) is the more successful of the two Koreas in both economic and political terms. Even the Asian economic crisis of 1997–1998, which hit badly, was weathered successfully, and when the next crisis came along in 2007, South Korea coped better than many other countries. This economic strength, taken with the steady progress of democratization since 1987, indicates that when the peninsula is eventually reunified, as one day it probably will be, a new unified Korea will follow the South Korea model rather than that of North Korea. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Republic of Korea.