Editorial Note

Abstract

The spring 2022 issue comprises four articles and four book reviews. Drawing on multiple disciplinary trajectories, the four articles explore topics related to ritual performance, historical memory, narrative formation, and neoliberal transformation. The first article, by Seunghyun Han, introduces understudied topic related to the mangbaerye ritual in late Chosŏn Korea. Han situates this ritual performance in the broader power dynamics between Ming loyalists and royal authority in the Chosŏn court. The next two articles cover colonial Korea. By utilizing photographs and photo postcards, Jooyeon Rhee examines kisaeng’s visual representations, demonstrating how images of kisaeng have been a contentious site of historical memory of Japanese colonialism. Through the literary analysis of Kim Namch’ŏn’s Barley, John Park examines how the aesthetic significance of buildings shapes the narrative movement in colonial Korea. The final article, by Seung-kyung Kim and John Finch, explores one of the hot topics in contemporary South Korea: millennials’ military service. Based on college students’ interviews, Kim and Finch demonstrate the decisions and strategies Korean millennials have made regarding their military service in the twenty-first century.We very much look forward to the fall 2022 special issue, “Textual Materiality in Korea, Premodern to Postmodern.” This issue will be guest edited by Ksenia Chizhova (Princeton University) and Olga Fedorenko (Seoul National University). It is exciting to introduce a special issue that will cover Korea’s past and present, exploring the materiality of writing that covers from textual interpretation to the infrastructure of textual transmission.I would like to announce that JKS has begun an author interview series to bring attention to the diverse contributions of its authors to the field of Korean studies. These take the form of 15- to 20-minute videos conducted by the JKS staff. We intend to highlight two or three contributions from each spring general issue and fall special issue. We discuss with authors how they came to their topic, the fascinating outcomes of their research, and where they hope to go in the future. All interviews are hosted by the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) and can be found on the GWIKS YouTube channel. For the author interview series for JKS volume 26, numbers 1 and 2, please visit the following YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhM_IyUMR-i3585GzlU_H3YWvZCsTSCDo.The editorial office of the Journal of Korean Studies is housed at the Institute for Korean Studies, George Washington University. JKS is published by Duke University Press. Publication of the Journal of Korean Studies is made possible by a generous grant from the Korea Foundation. We are currently accepting submissions for the spring general issues, as well as proposals for our annual fall special issues. For more information on JKS, please visit the following website: www.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-korean-studies/.