On January 13, 1903, the first Korean immigrants arrived in Hawai'i. Numbering a little more than a hundred individuals, this group represented the initial wave of organized Korean immigration to Hawai'i. Over the next two and a half years, nearly 7,500 Koreans would make the long journey eastward across the Pacific. Most were single men contracted to augment (and, in many cases, to offset) the large numbers of existing Chinese and Japanese plantation workers.

Although much has been written about early Chinese and Japanese laborers in Hawai'i, until now no comprehensive work had been...

North Korea remains the most mysterious of all Communist countries. The acute shortage of available sources has made it a difficult subject of scholarship. Through his access to Soviet archival material made available only a decade ago, contemporary North Korean press accounts, and personal interviews, Andrei Lankov presents for the first time a detailed look at one of the turning points in North Korean history: the country's unsuccessful attempts to de-Stalinize in the mid-1950s. He demonstrates that, contrary to common perception, North Korea was not a realm of undisturbed Stalinism; Kim...

Available for the first time in English, the ten short stories by modern Korean women collected here touch in one way or another on issues related to gender and kinship politics. All of the protagonists are women who face personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings in a Confucian, patriarchal Korean society. Their personal dreams and values have been compromised by gender expectations or their own illusions about female existence. They are compelled to ask themselves Who am I? Where am I going? What are my choices? Each story bears colorful and compelling...