Imperial Romance - by Su Yun Kim (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book argues that the idea of colonial intimacy had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals throughout the colonial era than previously understood. It investigates representations of Korean-Japanese intimate and familial relationships in literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (1905-45)" --

Book Synopsis

In Imperial Romance, Su Yun Kim argues that the idea of colonial intimacy within the Japanese empire of the early twentieth century had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals than previously understood. Kim investigates representations of Korean-Japanese intimate and familial relationships--including romance, marriage, and kinship--in literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (1905-45).

Focusing on Korean perspectives, Kim uncovers political meaning in the representation of intimacy and emotion between Koreans and Japanese portrayed in print media and films. Imperial Romance disrupts the conventional reading of colonial-period texts as the result of either coercion or the disavowal of colonialism, thereby expanding our understanding of colonial writing practices. The theme of intermarriage gave elite Korean writers and cultural producers opportunities to question their complicity with imperialism. Their fictions challenged expected colonial boundaries, creating tensions in identity and hierarchy, and also in narratives of the linear developmental trajectory of modernity. Examining a broad range of writings and films from this period, Imperial Romance maps the colonized subjects' fascination with their colonizers and with moments that allowed them to become active participants in and agents of Japanese and global imperialism.

Review Quotes

Imperial Romance contains a concise analysis of selected Korean literary and media texts that include the themes of intermarriage and romance. Su Yun Kim's Imperial Romance presents the beginnings of an exciting conversation and prepares us to ask further questions regarding race, love, and romance, whilst evaluating not only the past, but the contemporary moment of globalization.

-- "International Journal of Asian Studies"

Kim provides fresh interpretations of such writers as Yŏm Sangsŏp and Yi Kwangsu by offering new readings of the domestic settings in their works, which explore how they redefined and re-created a new kind of social order among their characters.

-- "Choice"

About the Author

Su Yun Kim is Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She is coeditor of East Asian Transwar Popular Culture.