This book examines the historical development of Korean food TV and its articulation of Koreanness in the era of globalization. Jaehyeon Jeong defines the evolution of Korean food TV as an outcome of the conjuncture between the television industry’s structural changes, the shift in food’s landscape and cultural legitimacy, and various sociocultural, political, and economic transformations. In addition, Jeong reveals how the state appropriates the banality of food to raise South Korea’s global image and how it utilizes domestic television to disseminate statist discourse of the nation. Understanding discourses of national cuisine as reflective of and formative of discourses of the nation, he argues that the growth of discourses of national cuisine is symptomatic of the struggle for nationness in a globalized world.

An in-depth investigation of the complex relationships among food, culture, and society, Communicating Food in Korea features contributors from a variety of disciplines, including economics, political science, communication studies, nutrition research, tourism research, and more. Each chapter presents a unique interpretation of food’s economic, political, and sociocultural relevance. Situated in Korea’s shifting historical contexts, contributors explore themes, such as colonialism, food symbolism, gastronationalism, multiculturalism, food tourism, food security, and food sovereignty to research the ways food intersects with social issues in Korean society.

This new textbook is a timely and interdisciplinary resource for students looking for an introduction to Korean popular culture, exploring the multifaceted meaning of Korean popular culture at micro and macro levels and the process of cultural production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context. Drawing on perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, including media and communications, film studies, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, history and literature, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Korean popular culture and its historical underpinnings, changing roles and dynamic meanings in the present moment of the digital social media age. The book’s sections include: K-pop Music Popular Cinema Television Web Drama, Webtoon and Animation Digital Games and Esports Lifestyle Media, Fashion and Food Nation Branding An accessible, comprehensive and thought-provoking work, providing historical and contemporary contexts, key issues and debates, this textbook will appeal to students of and providers of courses on popular culture, media studies and Korean culture and society more broadly.

Digital Media, Online Activism, and Social Movements in Korea deepens the current understanding of online activism and its impacts on society by highlighting how various forms of social movements have been mobilized in Korea. Through exploring movements in Korea such as political participation based on SNS, the 2008 U.S. beef protests, and the 2016-2017 candlelight vigils, the contributors study the intersection of digital media platforms, current trends, and social, cultural, and political conditions within Korean society. Using a wide range of events and movements, this book analyzes how people have utilized the development of digital media to facilitate social movements and effect social change.

Through a critical examination of the Korean diaspora in transnational contexts as a case study, Korean Digital Diaspora: Transnational Social Movements and Diaspora Identity unmasks the process of how people of the diaspora have built social interactions and communication with others online, how they have orchestrated social movements, and finally, how they have narrated and reshaped their diaspora identities in their everyday lives. Utilizing an ethnographical approach, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and a field study in New York City and Philadelphia, Hojeong Lee delineates how digital media technology has expanded into a new form of diaspora, digital diaspora, within the Korean diaspora community, and how it has mobilized the social movements of Korean diaspora members. Accordingly, Korean diaspora members have begun to imagine their community as a transnational global diaspora. Korean Digital Diaspora concludes with an analysis of how the changed attitudes of diaspora members have also influenced how they define themselves and how they are reshaping their diaspora identities. This multi-site, three-year study reveals the nexus of media, individuals, and society, highlighting the transnational social movements of diaspora members.

Korean Wild Geese Families: Gender, Family, Social, and Legal Dynamics of Middle-Class Asian Transnational Families in North America explores the experiences of middle-class Korean transnational families, whose mothers and children migrate abroad for children’s education while fathers remain in Korea and economically support their families, throughout transnational separation: before separation, during separation, and after reunification. It discusses the themes of (1) changes in wild geese parents’ relative gender statuses, housework patterns, and spousal relationships; (2) changes in mothering/fathering practices and intergenerational relationships; and (3) wild geese families’ settlement and integration in the host societies and re-adaptation to Korea after family reunification. Se Hwa Lee interviewed mothers in both the United States and Canada, as well as fathers in Korea, to compare the effects of immigration policies between the two countries in North America and present gender-balanced explanations. Se Hwa Lee also sheds light on Asian documented immigrants’ hardships and different degrees of empowerment and incorporation in the host societies according to legal status, employment, additional education, and co-ethnic community membership. This book offers readers valuable venues to enhance their understanding of increasingly diverse transnational families in North America.

The Korean American community is one of the major Asian ethnic subgroups in the United States. Though considered among one of the model minority groups, excelling academically and professionally, members in this community are plagued by unaddressed mental health obstacles. In Understanding Korean Americans’ Mental Health: A Guide to Culturally Competent Practices, Program Developments, and Policies, the editors, Anderson Sungmin Yoon, Sung Seek Moon, and Haein Son, examine a variety of mental health issues in the Korean American community, including depression, suicide, substance abuse, and trauma, and convincingly connect these challenges to cultural stigma and racial prejudice. The editors argue that this population and its mental health needs are neglected by current approaches in mainstream mental health services. Alarmingly, the very cultural values that help make up the Korean American community are contributing to its members’ reluctance to seek care, counting both familial and communal shame among the most pressing culprits. This book supports these claims with statistical realities and seeks to gather the relatively scarce research that does exist on this topic to underscore the heightened prevalence of mental health issues among Korean Americans, and the contributors make recommendations for more culturally competent practices, program developments, and policies.

Since their arrival in the 1960s, Korean immigrants in Argentina have been massively involved in the garment industry. Nevertheless, despite their decades-long concentration in the same sector, over time they have reshaped their motivations and business styles throughout the twists and turns of the host country’s junctures. Applying rigorous immigrant entrepreneurship theories, yet wary of orthodoxies, Kim examines the intriguing paths which Korean entrepreneurs have taken to develop their businesses in the Argentine garment industry amidst complex, frantically volatile social and economic circumstances, and argues for the application of a new approach that combines existing theories with historically contextual perspectives. This unique case study on Korean immigrant entrepreneurship in Latin America represents a significant milestone in the fields of migration and Korean studies and a substantial contribution to bridging the gap between the North, where such inquiries abound, and the South, where the history, settlement, and current status of Korean immigrants have been notoriously under-examined.

Through new research and materials, Edward T. Chang proves in Pachappa Camp: The First Koreatown in the United States that Dosan Ahn Chang Ho established the first Koreatown in Riverside, California in early 1905. Chang reveals the story of Pachappa Camp and its roots in the diasporic Korean community's independence movement efforts for their homeland during the early 1900s and in the lives of the residents. Long overlooked by historians, Pachappa Camp studies the creation of Pachappa Camp and its place in Korean and Korean American history, placing Korean Americans in Riverside at the forefront of the Korean American community’s history.

This book introduces researchers, students and the general public to an intriguing phenomenon at the intersection of diverse fields: national branding. In particular, it uses representative cases particularly to show how China responded to major challenges, not only in the distant past, but also especially in our hectic age of national image construction. By pursuing an interdisciplinary, socio-historical approach, the book sheds new light on the role of cultural symbols in national image building. As such, readers will learn how China has exploited its “black-and-white” tradition – calligraphy and painting – in the construction of a national image.