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With the growing popularity of K-pop, K-pop bands have become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. However, is the diversity of K-pop bands—referred to as K-pop diversity—genuine? This article addresses this question by examining issues related to race and color and institutional racism within the K-pop industry. The discussion consists of four parts. First, the article visits three framing ideas that guide the article’s analysis, specifically Critical Race Theory (CRT), Koreanness, and neoliberal multiculturalism. Second, it examines the racial and ethnic diversity of K-pop boy and girl groups from 2010 to 2022, highlighting the implications of this trend. Third, it offers a critical analysis of EXP Edition, the first non-Korean K-pop band. Fourth, the article delves into ChoColat, the first mixed-race Korean K-pop band. Through these case studies, the article explores institutional racism, neoliberal ideas of racial diversity, and the notion of Koreanness in K-pop bands. Finally, the article discusses the future of K-pop diversity and K-pop bands regarding multiculturalism.

In this paper, we examine the transformation of women’s fashion in 1970s and 80s South Korea by analyzing the images and narratives of unisex clothing in print media. During the industrialization, modernization, and Westernization of South Korean society in the postwar period, women’s fashion underwent tremendous change. Korean society witnessed women’s daily clothes shifting from traditional hanbok 韓服 to simplified Western clothes (kansobok 簡素服) to unisex/androgynous styles. Fashion items such as pantalons, jeans, shirts, tailored jackets and suits, casual office wear, and neckties, conventionally identified as men’s wear, became wardrobe choices for women. One explanation for this is that these changes took place as a result of the influence of South Korean state policy and the national reconstruction movement to simplify women’s dress codes for the sake of economization. However, a closer investigation of the narratives of unisex clothing reveals the impact of feminist movements, a robust youth culture, and young women’s own desire to achieve gender equality and active social participation. Women’s choice of unisex styles came to be viewed as “the era of de-feminized culture: shock of daughters” (t’al yǒsǒng munhwa sidae: ttaltŭl ŭi ch’unggyŏk). There was increased social pressure to reinforce the existing gender-binary system in the face of gender-blurring styles or what was seen as the masculinization of women. Women’s cultural expressions of power, freedom, consumer choices, and modernity, nonetheless, became manifested through their fashion choices. By shedding light on the emergence of unisex clothing in South Korean modernity, this study ultimately seeks to undermine our view of the West as the epicenter of fashion and beauty and urges us to imagine alternative histories and spaces of fashion and bodily aesthetics.

The tragic death of Crown Prince Sado in a rice chest in 1762 has been the subject of much discussion, not only in the academic world but also in South Korean popular culture. In contrast to historical data that suggest that Sado was mentally ill and a violent person whose death was necessary to safeguard the position of the Yi royal house, popular culture has presented him in a more sympathetic light as a victim, blaming political power struggles for his alienation from his father King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–76) and his eventual death. This article explores this glorification of Crown Prince Sado in South Korean popular culture. Cases in point are a wall-tile painting in downtown Seoul, which portrays the procession of King Chŏngjo to the grave of Prince Sado in 1795, the TV series Pimil ŭi mun (Secret Door, 2014), the film Sado (The Throne, 2015), and examples from pseudohistory that apply the Sado narrative to portray Korean history as an ongoing battle between good (us) and evil (them). To understand the narratological motivation behind the glorification of Sado, the article also makes use of historical sources such as Hanjungnok 閑中錄 (Records written in silence), the memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng, and Hyŏllyungwŏn chi 顯隆園志 (Hyŏllyung tomb epitaph), the epitaph King Chŏngjo wrote for this father. We argue that, for the public, Sado has become the epitome of a tragic hero who fell victim to the forces of the establishment.

This study investigates the use of historical films as a tool for content activism in challenging the historical perspectives of the Japanese government and hawkish right-wing groups. The investigation involves the conceptualization, production, and dissemination of two South Korean historical films, namely, Kwihyang 귀향 and Kunhamdo 군함도, and an examination of the social and political ramifications of these films. The study identifies two revisionist movements in Japan: (a) the rebranding of the comfort women as women who had chosen prostitution and (b) the transformation of Hashima Island, a site of forced labor, into a site of industrial revolution. It then outlines how the two films confronted these issues and led to social activism in relation to them. The study demonstrates how content activism through historical films can effectively confront historical revisionism.

Founded upon the Confucian moral principles of loyalty, filiality, and fidelity, the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) promoted these principles as a crucial means of maintaining the social and ethical order in society. In dealing with numerous incidents of filial crimes, however, the Chosŏn state had to strike a balance between morality and law, constantly debating the appropriate circumstances and degree of exoneration for filial avengers. From a legal perspective, vengeful crimes committed under the flag of virtue could not automatically be sanctioned, for this would generate further retaliation and eventually lead to chaos. In the case of a married daughter’s filial vengeance, in particular, judgment was even more complex because her devotion to her natal parents was expected to be subordinate to the higher virtue of marital fidelity under the intensifying Confucian model of patriarchy and patrilineality during the latter part of the dynasty. Centering on an eighteenth-century crime committed by a married woman to avenge her father’s death, this article reconsiders the complex nature of married women’s filial piety toward their natal parents, which complicated the orthodox boundaries of their natal relations as prescribed by the Confucian state. This article also explicates the cultural and legal underpinnings of filial vengeance in late Chosŏn society, as demonstrated by the verdicts for such acts of violence situated within one of the most contested cultural and legal realms in eighteenth-century Korea.

This study analyzes the methods Imperial Japan employed in changing the names of Korean territories and examines how these changes related to the policies of the colonial power. The Japanese photo album Hantō no kin’ei depicts a variety of landscapes in colonial Korea. It also contains tables of contents in both Japanese and English, whose primary purpose was to Romanize Korean place names (generally written in Chinese characters) based on their Japanese pronunciation. This study argues that in order to superimpose its identity onto Korea, Japan transliterated Korean place names based on Japanese pronunciation rather than the original Korean. Through this strategy, Japan laid claim to such areas and made manifest its territorial expansion.

In 1749, King Yŏngjo and his courtiers began to venerate the Ming emperors Hongwu and Chongzhen at Taebodan in the courtyard of Ch’angdŏk Palace. This was in addition to Wanli, who had been honored since 1704. During the late Chosŏn period, the court regularly held rituals to worship these emperors. This study examines court discussions to assess the impact of this veneration on the image of the emperors. These show that prior to 1749, Chosŏn monarchs and ministers often viewed the emperors negatively, while at the same time lauding their virtues. The study also explores the process through which the court constructed orthodox narratives on the emperors, a process which bestowed the emperors with certain merits and virtues. These images became the only legitimate means through which to view them and were reinforced by regular state rituals. After 1749, the emperors became objects of supreme veneration rather than objective evaluation. Ming loyalism discouraged voices critical of the Ming or disrespectful to the emperors, an approach that supplanted a more critical Confucian interpretation.

This study explores paratextual transformations in the translation of Kobal 고발 by the North Korean writer Bandi (Pandi 반디) in terms of intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic translation. The manuscript was originally smuggled out of North Korea and published in South Korea by a right-wing publisher as a book on anti-communism. It has since been translated in 28 countries, gaining worldwide attention and winning the English PEN award. It was also republished in South Korea, with a focus on human rights through paratextual transformation. Paratexts act as powerful packaging instruments largely influenced by socio-cultural context. As a publication written by a North Korean writer, the paratexts in translations of Kobal are directly related to how the receiving country sees South and North Korea. We examine six translations in different languages centering on the paratextual changes, including the title, cover image, prefatorial material, and epitext to explore the perspectives inherent in them and the ways they interact with each other. This analysis of paratextual shifts involves not only translators, publishers, and editors, but also a much wider variety of agents such as literary agents, critics, journalists, and reviewers. This study thus seeks to demonstrate the possibility of expanding the links between translation studies and Korean studies, and also of broadening the horizons of translation studies.

It is noted that European pictorial technique was introduced during the Chosŏn dynasty via China and that Western objects exchanged through diplomatic activities by Chosŏn envoys played a significant role in the spread of this new painting style in Korea. However, it is not fully understood how Chosŏn people perceived Western painting techniques, which elements they favored and which were less appreciated. Nor do we know by what routes the new visual elements were transmitted. Focusing on multiple channels through which various images were imported and the diverse agents who took part in the cultural transmission between Chosŏn Korea and Qing China, this study explores Chosŏn Korea’s reception and understanding of Western painting techniques and the application of this new style in their works of art, such as “Han Palace” or “Towers and Pavilions” in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition, Chinese paintings and prints, which were mass-produced for larger markets and circulated throughout China as well as exported to other foreign countries are investigated as possible sources for the Chosŏn works. Taking paintings by professional painters in Beijing working outside of the Qing imperial court and Suzhou prints as vehicles of carrying the new artistic taste and pictorial techniques, this research proposes the assumption that these Chinese visual materials infused with Western style were imported to and circulated in Korea from the late eighteenth century onward and that these foreign images contributed to Korea’s (mis)perception and (mis)understanding of Chinese art and European pictorial conventions.