Most Popular Books by Young Kim

A "mesmerizing" novel of a love triangle and a mysterious disappearance in South Korea ( Booklist). In the fast-paced, high-urban landscape of Seoul, C and K are brothers who have fallen in love with the same beguiling drifter, Se-yeon, who gives herself freely to both of them. Then, just as they are trying desperately to forge a connection in an alienated world, Se-yeon suddenly disappears. All the while, a spectral, calculating narrator haunts the edges of their lives, working to help the lost and hurting find escape through suicide. When Se-yeon reemerges, it is as the narrator''s new client. Recalling the emotional tension of Milan Kundera and the existential anguish of Bret Easton Ellis, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself is a dreamlike "literary exploration of truth, death, desire and identity" ( Publishers Weekly). Cinematic in its urgency, the novel offers "an atmosphere of menacing ennui [set] to a soundtrack of Leonard Cohen tunes" ( Newark Star-Ledger). "Kim''s novel is art built upon art. His style is reminiscent of Kafka''s and also relies on images of paintings (Jacques-Louis David''s ''The Death of Marat,'' Gustav Klimt''s ''Judith'') and film (Jim Jarmusch''s ''Stranger Than Paradise''). The philosophy—life is worthless and small—reminds us of Camus and Sartre, risky territory for a young writer. . . . But Kim has the advantage of the urban South Korean landscape. Fast cars, sex with lollipops and weather fronts from Siberia lend a unique flavor to good old-fashioned nihilism. Think of it as Korean noir." — Los Angeles Times "Like Georges Simenon, [Kim''s] keen engagement with human perversity yields an abundance of thrills as well as chills (and, for good measure, a couple of memorable laughs). This is a real find." —Han Ong, author of Fixer Chao

The Korean demilitarized zone might be among the most heavily guarded places on earth, but it also provides passage for thousands of defectors, spies, political emissaries, war prisoners, activists, tourists, and others testing the limits of Korean division. This book focuses on a diverse selection of inter-Korean border crossers and the citizenship they acquire based on emotional affiliation rather than constitutional delineation. Using their physical bodies and emotions as optimal frontiers, these individuals resist the stateÕs right to draw geopolitical borders and define their national identity. Drawing on sources that range from North Korean documentary films, museum exhibitions, and theater productions to protester perspectives and interviews with South Korean officials and activists, this volume recasts the history of Korean division and draws a much more nuanced portrait of the regionÕs Cold War legacies. The book ultimately helps readers conceive of the DMZ as a dynamic summation of personalized experiences rather than as a fixed site of historical significance.

Transnational Communities in the Smartphone Age: The Korean Community in the Nation’s Capital examines the durable ties immigrants maintain with the home country and focuses in particular on their transnational cultural activities. In light of changing technologies, especially information and communication technologies (ICTs), which enable a faster, easier, and greater social and cultural engagement with the home country, this book argues that middle-class immigrants, such as Korean immigrants in the Washington-Baltimore region, sustain more regular connections with the homeland through cultural, rather than economic or political, transnational activities. Though not as conspicuous and contentious as other forms of transnational participation, cultural transnational activities may prove to be more lasting and also serve as a backbone for maintaining longer-lasting connections and identities with the home country.

Countries increasingly rely on independent fiscal councils to constrain policymakers’ discretion and curb the bias towards excessive deficits and pro-cyclical policies. Since fiscal councils are often recent and heterogeneous across countries, assessing their impact is challenging. Using the latest (2016) vintage of the IMF Fiscal Council Dataset, we focus on two tasks expected to strengthen fiscal performance: the preparation or assessment of forecasts, and the monitoring of compliance with fiscal rules. Tentative econometric evidence suggests that the presence of a fiscal council is associated with more accurate and less optimistic fiscal forecasts, as well as greater compliance with fiscal rules.

This book provides an overview of current research on a variety of topics related to both large-scale and classroom assessment. First, the purposes, traditions and principles of assessment are considered, with particular attention to those common to all levels of assessment and those more connected with either classroom or large-scale assessment. Assessment design based on sound assessment principles is discussed, differentiating between large-scale and classroom assessment, but also examining how the design principles overlap. The focus then shifts to classroom assessment and provides specific examples of assessment strategies, before examining the impact of large-scale assessment on curriculum, policy, instruction, and classroom assessment. The book concludes by discussing the challenges that teachers currently face, as well as ways to support them. The book offers a common language for researchers in assessment, as well as a primer for those interested in understanding current work in the area of assessment. In summary, it provides the opportunity to discuss large-scale and classroom assessment by addressing the following main themes: ·Purposes, Traditions and Principles of Assessment ·Design of Assessment Tasks ·Classroom Assessment in Action ·Interactions of Large-Scale and Classroom Assessment ·Enhancing Sound Assessment Knowledge and Practices It also suggests areas for future research in assessment in mathematics education.

This volume is a collection of six essays that Dr. Kim published in various journals over the past several years. They represent the early period of Dr. Kim''s theological journey into Christian faith as a Korean Christian or, more broadly, an East Asian Christian. These essays deal primarily with religio-cultural themes related to my existential situation. - from the Preface

Justice as Right Actions presents an original theory of justice anchored in the analytical philosophical tradition. In contrast to many contemporary approaches, the theory provides normative guidance, rather than focusing solely on political structures and institutions, as the question of justice is seen to comprise both a moral inquiry concerned with questions of good and bad, right and wrong, and a political inquiry, concerned with the nature of the polity and how individuals relate to it. Presenting a relational account of justice, rather than a distributive account – the latter, so much more prevalent in current studies – communications are seen as the key to the theory, both in the substantive sense as a discursive method of resolving disputes, as well as instrumentally, in the transmission of concepts, especially values through time. Rule-oriented in approach, justice as right actions attempts to be value-neutral, acknowledging, however, an underlying thin theory of the good, including concepts of rationality, autonomous moral agency, equal concern and respect for others, as well as plurality of values. Its political context is liberalism, with components of negative liberty and equality of concern and respect, while underscoring as well, the concepts of tolerance and social diversity. In this study, the original theory of Justice as Right Actions is also contrasted with and situated among contemporary accounts of justice, including the most important theoretical works on the topic in the past half-century. Thus, the study also serves as a valuable review and critique of such major contemporary accounts of justice.

A rare glimpse into North Korean propaganda—in parades, posters, murals, theater, and films

This book examines East Asia''s approach to ''Developmental Environmentalism''. Embracing this, East Asian governments are establishing their countries as leaders in green energy. This book conains analysis of national strategies policymakers using economic policy for their green ambitions. They conclude by examining these lessons for other countries.

The debut English-language collection of one of South Korea''s most distinctive and accomplished sci-fi authors Straddling science fiction, fantasy and myth, the writings of award-winning author Bo-Young Kim have garnered a cult following in South Korea, where she is widely acknowledged as a pioneer and inspiration. On the Origin of Species makes available for the first time in English some of Kim''s most acclaimed stories, as well as an essay on science fiction. Her strikingly original, thought-provoking work teems with human and non-human beings, all of whom are striving to survive through evolution, whether biologically, technologically or socially. Kim''s literature of ideas offers some of the most rigorous and surprisingly poignant reflections on posthuman existence being written today. Bo-Young Kim (born 1975) won the inaugural Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Award with her first published novella in 2004 and has gone on to win the annual South Korean SF Novel Award three times. In addition to writing, she regularly serves as a lecturer, juror and editor of sci-fi anthologies, and served as a consultant to Parasite director Bong Joon Ho''s earlier sci-fi film Snowpiercer. She has novellas forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2021. She lives in Gangwon Province, South Korea, with her family.

There has been a distinct tendency in modern scholarship to underestimate Luther''s teaching on love by overemphasizing his teaching on justification. Calling this tendency into question, this volume advances the thesis that Luther''s teaching on faith and love operates as the overriding thematic pair in the dynamics of Christ and the law--structurally and conceptually undergirding the 1535 Galatians commentary. The research situates itself in the landscape of Luther scholarship via a special attention to Finnish Luther scholars and scholarship.

There is widespread agreement that the world''s most successful developing countries in the 1980s were those in Southeast Asia. Following in the footsteps of postwar Japan and more recently Korea, the populations of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines have made enormous strides in income, industrial and agricultural production, exports, education, health, nutrition, consumption, and other development indicators. This book brings together political scientists, economists, officials of Asian governments, the United States, and representatives of the multilateral banks to analyze and explain Southeast Asia''s extraordinary growth. Chapters and contributors to The Southeast Asian Economic Miracle include: "Recent Developments and Future Prospects of Indonesia" by Anwar Nasution; "The Economic Experience and Prospects of Thailand" by Sukhumbhand Paribatra; "The Development of the Former Indochina States" by Frederick Brown; "Trade and Investment in Southeast Asian Development" by Stephen Parker; and "Managing Renewable Resources in Southeast Asia: The Problem of Deforestation" by Gareth Porter. Among the critical questions that the contributors address are: Is the success of the 1980s and early 1990s a permanent part of the world''s economic landscape? How will this region react to the growth of China''s vast productive capacity and to the faltering of Japan''s economy? What will be the effect of U.S. military disengagement caused by domestic budgetary concerns and the end of the cold war? The Southeast Asian Economic Miracle is an important study of the shifting winds of the political economy of growth in our time—the movement away from a command to a free market environment. It will be an essential resource for political scientists, Asia area scholars, economists, and policymakers.