Contemporary Korean Culture from the Edge: Transgression, Innovation, and Intimacy

(Hardback)

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This book is for any reader seeking to understand and engage with contemporary South Korean culture. Inspired by the term edge, which in Korean refers to attitudes and ideas that are new, gripping and transgressive, each chapter provides a new perspective on todays Korea.

Drawing from a range perspectives, Contemporary Korean Culture from the Edge: Transgression, Innovation, and Intimacy examines Korean culture (including food, music, fashion, K-pop, cinema and much more) as twenty-first century global phenomenon. The book highlights unique features of Korean culture such as the role of astrology in K-pop fandom, feminist art, and recent fiction, poetry, and drama. In uncovering underrepresented areas of modern Korea, the chapters pay attention to lesser known but important aspects, such as the countrys astonishingly dynamic urban architecture. By casting a wide net, and including bottom-up cultural movements, such as protest art, the book reveals the rich and critical role that art, music, and literature play in Korea.

Author Bio

Hong Kal is Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Art and Art History at York University. She is the author of Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism: Spectacle, Politics, and History (2011).

Jooyeon Rhee is Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. She is the author of The Novel in Transition: Gender and Literature in Early Colonial Korea (2019).

Thomas R. Klassen is Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is co-editor of North Korea: Translation and Transformation in a Global Context (2024).