The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: the Untold History by Monica Kim (review)

Abstract

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 81 (2021): 370–375 that leave people isolated from their cities, sites that even now offer little space or tolerance for heterogeneity. These novellas “transport both female narrators/protagonists back in time and space to show the contradicting experiences of colonialism and modernity by inscribing their experiences onto the city” (p. 165). In addition, both critique the standard binaries of resistance versus submission and nationalist versus antinationalist. As Kim argues, these post colonial novellas “pointedly question how to make sense of the Japanese colonial presence in the putatively postcolonial while also challenging the applicability of the very idea of the postcolonial in contemporary Seoul and Taipei” (p. 165). Urban Modernities brims with insights. It is a timely monograph that will be of great interest to scholars and students in a range of fields. This book is well-researched and clearly written. It skillfully intertwines Western theory while at the same time eschewing jargon. Drawing from a range of scholarship on East Asia in English, Chinese, and Korean, Kim’s book advances multiple fields, including the still relatively young field of modern intra-Asian comparative literature. It will almost certainly inspire significant transnational and transregional scholarship.