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Cosmopolitan Memories, Vernacular Visions: The Roots of Modern Korean with Daniel Pieper (U Toronto Press, 2026)
Cosmopolitan Memories, Vernacular Visions: The Roots of Modern Korean (U Toronto Press, 2026) traces the emergence of vernacular Korean as a distinct subject of study in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Centering on school textbooks as key sites of change, Daniel Pieper reveals how language education became instrumental in forging modern Korean literacy and identity. The book situates this process within broader global patterns of vernacularization and nation-building across East Asia, Europe, and South Asia. Introducing the concept of “transformative bilingualism,” it argues that Korea’s language modernization – while catalyzed by colonial influence – ultimately reshaped both Korean and Japanese literacies.
Daniel Pieper is a Korea Foundation Lecturer in Korean Studies at Monash University. He specializes in modern Korean language and literary history. His current research focuses on the emergence of vernacular Korean as a discrete subject in the modern school, the textual differentiation process of cosmopolitan Hanmun and vernacular Korean, and the role of language ideology in directing language standardization in pre-colonial and colonial-era Korea.
Buy Cosmopolitan Memories, Vernacular Visions here
Dr. Pieper’s University Profile: here
Dr. Pieper on Academia.edu Profile: here
More by the author: "Foreign Objects or One Wing of the Same Bird? The Place of Hancha in Modern Korean Identity" in The Politics of Script and Language here
"Language Policy and Vernacular Education in Korea up to 1945" in Handbook of Language Policies in East Asia here
About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu
18 Sept 2026
Jerome Sauvage, "Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013.
In this capacity, he was the most senior UN official in North Korea during one of the most eventful political periods on the Korean peninsula in recent memory. Amidst the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and death of Kim Jong-il, Sauvage had to resurrect and strengthen UNDP’s—and the UN overall’s—presence in North Korea by delicately navigating the politics of not only Pyongyang, but also the overall international development ecosystem.
In this NBN episode, we talk with Sauvage about those experiences, which he recounts in his memoir Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK (Bloomsbury, 2026).
14 Sept 2026
Remco E Breuker, "Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip" (U Hawaii Press, 2026)
Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip (https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9798880701902) (University of Hawaii Press (https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/publish_partner/university-of-hawaii-press), 2026) comprises translations of poems, tales, letters, epitaphs, and funeral orations by Yi Kyubo (1168–1241), the foremost writer and poet of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). Dr. Breuker’s translation and introduction humanize this celebrated poet, whom he reveals as not only a great writer, but a doggedly ambitious man with a reputation for drinking, a son weighed down by his family’s expectations of greatness, and a father who grieved for his dead son. Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated” is an excellent book for anyone who wants to better understand the famed writer and the political, social, and literary context of the Koryŏ dynasty.
Remco Breuker is a Professor of Korean Studies (https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/medewerkers/remco-breuker#tab-1)at Leiden University. His research spans medieval and modern Korea and Northeast Asia, with a particular focus on historiography, identity formation, borders, state formation, and the uses of history in contemporary politics.
He has translated Korean literature into Dutch, and in 2025 he both contributed to and co-edited an English translation of the Samguk Yusa, an important Korean historical text.
Buy Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: here (https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/not-everything-unfolds-as-anticipated-selections-from-yi-kyubos-tongguk-yi-sangguk-chip/)
Dr. Breuker’s LinkedIn: here (https://www.linkedin.com/in/remcobreuker/)
Dr. Breuker’s Bluesky: here (https://bsky.app/profile/remcobreuker.bsky.social)
About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She
has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation
Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu
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Who has been a guest on New Books in Korean Studies
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Zev Handel
Gregory N Evon
Fyodor Tertitskiy
Dr. Jingoo Kang
Dr. Sakari Tolppanen
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Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100
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Engagement
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Nicholas Gordon host the show. Published by New Books Network.
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