An acclaimed history of the Korean Peninsula from World War II to the present day North Korea is an impoverished, famine-ridden nation, but it is also a nuclear power whose dictator Kim Jong-un regularly threatens his neighbors and adversaries, the United States in particular, with destruction. Even though Kim and President Donald Trump's responses to him dominate the daily headlines, the idea that North Korea is a menace is not a new one. Indeed,...

The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness is a stark and lyrical work that follows a teen-aged girl who has just arrived in Seoul to work in a factory while struggling to achieve her dream of finishing school and becoming a writer. Shin sets the this complex and nuanced coming of age story against the backdrop of Korea's industrial sweatshops of the 1970's and takes on the extreme exploitation, oppression, and urbanization that helped catapult Korea's economy...

"Candace Park knows a lot about playing a role. For most of her life, she's been playing the role of the quiet Korean girl who takes all AP classes and plays a classical instrument, keeping her dreams of stardom-and her obsession with SLK, K-pop's top boyband-to herself. She doesn't see how a regular girl like her could possibly become one of those K-pop goddesses she sees on YouTube. Even though she can sing. Like, really sing. So when Candace secretly...

A talented young deep-sea diver from occupied 1948 Korea's neighboring Jeju Island visits Mt. Halla for her family's annual trading trip before her romance with a mountain youth is upended by family tragedy and political turbulence.

The animated prequel to the box office record-breaker Train to Busan, and the latest from director Yeon Sang-ho, SEOUL STATION follows a man sleeping in a train station who becomes a catalyst for the pandemonium in downtown Seoul: a zombie apocalypse. The rapidly-spreading infection propels an authentic family drama, drawing mordant parallels to real-world social horrors.

An introduction to the geography, history, economy, people, culture, and government of The Land of the Morning Calm, a peninsula dominated by larger neighbors for many centuries.

Wanting to follow in the footsteps of her free-diving haenyeo grandmother, a young Korean girl dutifully consumes her grandmother s strength-building abalone porridge and practices her breath control before suiting up and overcoming fears to make remarkable discoveries.

"Sonju comes of age in Japanese-occupied Korea, and having received a modern education, she imagines a life of equality and freedom of choice. Her ideals soon clash with the centuries-old Confucian tradition of order and conformity when her mother arranges her marriage to a man she has never met. The decisions she makes during the Korean War lead to her being disowned by her family, betrayed by her best friend, and shunned by society. Through the...

In South Korea, Yoori and her Appa, who grew up in North Korea, work with other villagers to send special balloons to carry rice over the border into North Korea, where people are starving.