This special issue deals with the multifaceted roles of Professor Cho Seung-bog (Cho Sŭngbok 趙承福, 1922-2012), one of the founders of post-war Korean and Japanese studies in Sweden. Concurrently with his academic career, he was active in Korean diaspora socio political movements, including those advocating peace, democratization and reunification of North and South Korea. This special issue aims to clarify the deep interrelationship between Cho’s academic and socio-political commitments. His research in linguistics, his primary discipline, focused on Korean and Japanese sociolinguistics but also included cultural studies. Cho’s political views and commitments were inextricable from his academic life and underpinned his close connections with Eastern European colleagues across the dividing lines of the Cold War.
In the early 1950s, Europe was still marked by the chaos and trauma caused by the world war that had ravaged the continent. Sweden was an exception. Stubbornly clinging to its centuries-long neutrality policy to the extent possible, the country had been spared many horrors other countries had had to endure. With its industrial apparatus intact, Sweden’s export of industrial goods and machinery expanded. In early January 1952, Cho Seung-bog (1922–2012), a stateless refugee of Korean ethnicity, knocked on the door of “the safe Folkhemmet of Sweden.” He entered the country when the formation period of “the Swedish model” 1920–1950 had gone over into the harvest period 1950–1975. The foundations of the Swedish welfare state were laid, which contributed to the fact that he, unbeknownst to himself at the time, would live here for the rest of his working life, moving to France after his retirement.
The Korean diaspora has lived in the Russian Far East since the nineteenth century. The history of the Korean diaspora’s existence in the region was politicized for several reasons. Due to Chosŏn’s pursuit of an isolationist policy until the mid-nineteenth century, to the Russian population Koreans were almost unknown. Small groups of Koreans were located in the south of the Far East of Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, but they rarely contacted the administration. The Russian population met with Koreans during the forced mass migration from the Korean peninsula in the second half of the nineteenth century. The attitude in Russia toward Koreans often changed and was based on the impressions and conclusions of those who met them or gathered information about them and subsequently published their notes in print. The description of these representations is limited to 1911—the beginning of the Amur expedition (1911–1912)—which changed not only the representation of the Koreans in the Russian Far East but also many other aspects of the region. The aim of this article is to consider and analyze representations of Koreans in Russian society before 1911. Elements of the sources and narratives for this piece are introduced to science and academia for the first time.
The Treaty of Kanghwa, 1876, was the first in succession of what are known to historians as "unequal treaties" that integrated the state of Choson (Korea) into the global diplomatic and economic processes in the late nineteenth century. Korean historiography has traditionally emphasized the involuntary nature of the treaty, stressing that the Choson government was forced to sign it following the threat of Japanese retaliation. At the same time, the actions of the government in Tokyo are often assessed as pre-meditated, part of a wider plan, and, sometimes, aimed at the eventual annexation of the Korean Peninsula. In other words, so far as the events of 1876 are concerned, Japan is the aggressor, and Choson the victim. The author of this paper aims to provide a more balanced and objective assessment of the series of historical events that led to the signing of the Korea-Japan Treaty in 1876, based on a comprehensive analysis of the domestic political circumstances in both countries and the geopolitical situation in the Northeast Asian region. The paper offers a critique of the analytical theory that the Treaty of Kanghwa was part of a plan to colonize Korea, and highlights the possibility that the government of Choson made its own decision to sign the treaty.
The modern Korean language is changing in a number of directions and is actively replenished with new lexical units, among which a significant role is played by abbreviations-complex words formed with the help of morphological reduction, combination and contamination, including borrowed morphemes. These units are formed by means of morphological compression, abbreviation and combination, which contributes to the optimization of language nomination, the acceleration of communication and implementation of the principle of linguistic economy. This article analyzes the structural and semantic analysis of abbreviations, as well as their word-formation models. The relevance of the study is due to the dynamism of word formation processes in Korean, which reflect social and cultural changes. In the conditions of digitalization of the state and society, development of media discourse and internationalization of communication, abbreviations acquire special significance, as they are widely used in Internet communication, neologization of colloquial speech and youth slang, and actively enter into everyday speech, forming a special layer of modern Korean vocabulary. The demand for this study is determined by the need to systematize the mechanisms of abbreviation formation, analyze their morphological structure and derivational models. The results of the study presented in this article could be useful for further study of nomination mechanisms and word formation strategies in Korean, as well as for identifying general trends in the dynamics of lexical composition of languages actively influenced by globalization and technological progress.
This paper explores the overlooked antiwar activism of Cho Seung-bog (1922–2012), a Korean intellectual who publicly opposed the Korean War while residing in the United States. Drawing on Cho’s unpublished Japanese-language memoirs, diaries, and archival materials from Uppsala University, the study situates his activism within the broader contexts of Cold War politics, postcolonial nationalism, and global peace movements. Born in colonial Manchuria and educated in Japan, Cho developed a decolonial consciousness and Christian pacifist ideals that shaped his political stance. During the Korean War, he criticized U.S. intervention as imperialist aggression and advocated for Korean self-determination, positioning himself as a “progressive nationalist” and liberal pacifist. His speeches attracted attention from American peace organizations but also led to political repression and the revocation of his U.S. residency. Cho’s subsequent move to Sweden marked a shift toward transnational peace activism, where he engaged with groups like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. The paper argues that Cho’s activism represents a pioneering example of Third World peace discourse that transcended Cold War ideological binaries, emphasizing liberation and national sovereignty as essential components of genuine peace.
This article reconstructs the transnational life and academic career of Cho Seung-bog (1922-2012)-a pioneering founder of Japanese and Korean studies in post-war Scandinavia-through a biographical and intellectual-historical lens. Tracing Cho's trajectory from pre-war Manchuria and wartime Japan to Cold War America and neutral Sweden, it examines how his overlapping positionalities shaped his scholarship and activism for Korean unification and democracy. In Sweden, Cho reinterpreted Japanese cultural essentialism (nihonjinron) from a post-colonial perspective, transforming its logic of uniqueness into a critical instrument-a "reversed nihonjinron." His writings juxtaposed Japan's assumed hierarchical collectivism with the supposedly "universalist" ethics of continental East Asia, seeking to re-center Korea and China within global humanistic discourse. The article argues that Cho's intellectual strategies illuminate how post-colonial scholars could deploy essentialist discourse to subvert imperial hierarchies and articulate diasporic nationalism, while exemplifying the inseparability of knowledge, ethics, and political engagement in Cold War and post-Cold War East Asian studies.
Cho Seung-bog was a Korean linguist and thinker who worked in Sweden. He had connections with both North and South Korea and was a pioneer in conducting the first comprehensive research and writing on the Korean language in Northern Europe. To date, his achievements have not yet been the subject of in-depth research. The most recent formally published academic work to examine Cho’s life and contribution as a Korean linguist is Heo. Heo (2024) provides an introduction to the contents of Cho’s autobiography and offers a concise overview of his phonological study. Given the introductory level of Heo’s work, there is a necessity for further research in this area. The purpose of this study is to provide a concise overview of Cho Seung-bog’s contributions to linguistics, while addressing salient points in greater depth. This will facilitate a more nuanced appreciation of the significance and limitations of his research. A comprehensive overview of Cho’s life can be found in his autobiographies, and thus it is not necessary to recount it in detail in this study. Instead, the focus will be on his linguistic work, with particular reference to Cho (1967).
This article examines benefit concerts organized by kisaeng guilds during the Japanese colonial period, drawing on newspaper and magazine sources. These events supported disaster victims, the poor, and schools, showcasing kisaeng as contributors to public welfare despite their marginalized status. Active from the 1910s, these concerts reflected kisaeng’s aspirations for social recognition and eventually expanded to include collaborations with community groups. Educational institutions’ requests for such concerts underscore their perceived effectiveness. This study sheds light on kisaeng’s evolving social roles and calls for further investigation into Korean women’s transformative experiences as “new women” during this dynamic historical period.
After the overthrow of President Rhee Syngman (Yi Sŭngman) in 1960, South Korea experienced a boom in translations of Japanese literature. Japanese fiction has remained popular ever since, but the reception of these texts has always responded to the needs of the times. This article investigates South Korean perspectives on the popular fiction genre of “business novels” during the 1970s and 1980s, arguing that this literature served as a tool not only to address the complex postcolonial relationship with Japan but also to deal with domestic issues such as South Korea’s rapid economic development and the anxieties and desires it brought with it.
This study explores indexical meanings and pragmatic functions of the Korean noun pubun (“part”), especially when it is used as a bound noun to construct demonstrative pronoun structures. From a perspective of indexicality, our analysis shows that a major function of pubun is to avoid interpersonal conflicts by making it possible to construct and negotiate the meaning of what is being referred to. We also present how pubun functions contextually when the speaker expresses his/her opinion or thought in a mitigated way. In contrast to the view of pubun as a source of vagueness in discourse, our analysis demonstrates the function of pubun that regulates a speaker’s epistemic stance in collaborating with other interlocutors.
The inclusion of nine Confucian academies ( (sic)(sic)) in South Korea on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019 marked the conclusion of a lengthy and controversial process that officially began in 2011. This study aims to explore how modern reinterpretations of Confucianism have led to differing understandings of the historical role of Confucian academies in China and Korea, which have enabled South Korea to register the academies as World Heritage sites. It will trace the development of different perceptions of the academies in both countries. Findings suggest that an interplay between universalist and essentialist interpretations of Confucianism contributed to both criticism and success of the South Korean application.
Charles Dallet is today only remembered, if at all, for his two-volume Histoire de l’Eglise de Corée,1 which was published in May 1874. It was the first full-length book about Korea ever published in the West except for various texts published in several languages around 1700 that were based on the account by Hendrick Hamel of his time in Korea, or on Chinese sources. It has never been revised, translated, or edited (except in Korean). In recent years I have been translating Dallet’s work into English, modernizing his romanization of Korean names and adding a comprehensive set of footnotes, which include a precise identification of the persons he names, together with indications of the sources on which Dallet was drawing when he was not simply following Bishop Daveluy’s draft History. This has involved collecting all the main documents available for the period covered by Dallet, whether used by him or not, and translating many of them into English.
In this article, I delve into an underexamined subject: South Korea’s convoluted diplomatic exchanges with North Korea amidst the changing geopolitical scene created by the period of Sino-US détente between 1969 and 1973. Existing research on inter-Korean diplomacy is primarily found within South Korea, as most Western scholars discount any impact of inter-Korean diplomacy during this period. Not surprisingly, South and North Korea’s efforts to navigate the changing geopolitical environment via high-level talks has received inadequate attention from academia. This article retraces some of the lesser-known developments on the diplomatic front in the Asia Pacific region from the late 1960s to the early 1970s
In South Korea, despite views of religion as offering solace, the concept of hell maintains a strong presence. Narratives about hell are common across the major religions but are also found in the non-denominational sphere. We analyze two examples of cinematic visions of hell found in the South Korean film Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (Kim Yong-hwa, 2017) and the South Korean TV series Hellbound (Yeon Sang-ho, 2021). While Along with the Gods uses hell as a spectacular space, Hellbound, by removing the question of morality from hell, subverts its meaning. Although in their depictions both series refer to the traditional vision of hell, especially that of Buddhism, their interpretation goes beyond traditional models. We argue that the representation of hell in both works can be read as a polemic or even a critique of institutional religions and is an example of religious bricolage in post-secular South Korea.
While Juche propaganda presents North Korean gastronomy as the epitome of authenticity and tradition, North Korean culinary ideology and practice have never been static. Through the decades, food culture in North Korea has been subjected to the impact of economic changes and foreign cultural influences, including those from the Soviet Union and China. Today, North Korean cuisine continues to change its forms and absorb new foreign elements, including not only nonauthentic ingredients, but also novel ways in which food is served, presented, and appreciated. The article traces the historical transformation of North Korean culinary nationalism in connection with economic realities, as well as ideological and cultural influences. This article is based on a variety of materials including culinary books, North Korean culinary TV shows, as well as culinary reference in North Korean films and books,
This article analyzes ethnographic information about the Korean peninsula that can be found in texts produced by Iberian missionaries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although Korea did not generate the same degree of interest as neighboring countries such as China and Japan in which Catholic missions had been established, members of religious orders were nevertheless able to acquire a remarkable knowledge of the topography, the climate, and the social and political system of the country. These ethnographic references have great relevance for the history of cultural interchange between Korea and Europe, since they were the basis on which European readers formed their initial image of Korea and its people.
This study aims to investigate the historical development of modern domesticity in early and mid-colonial Korea. It demonstrates how the modern ideas of selfhood and love were integrated into the notion of domesticity, establishing the ideals of conjugal love and family harmony. Focusing on the media practices of the women's magazine Shin'gajong, the article uncovers the media's role in defining beauty practices and family music as central to modern domesticity. It argues that these modern domestic responsibilities were normalized by the media-driven concept of kyoyang (self-cultivation), reflecting the intertwined interests of reform-minded nationalists and colonial capitalists.
Ties between Bulgaria and North Korea date back to the aftermath of World War II. Under Soviet hegemony, relations between the two countries have experienced both phases of cooperation and times of distress. Nowadays, despite significantly more distant relations, both countries maintain exchange in education and culture as well as by operating embassies in each other's capitals. Because of the shared past and current cooperation projects, Sofia could become an important bridge between North Korea and the outside world. This article explores Bulgaria-North Korea relations in the past and provides an outlook on possible developments.
