For many centuries the residents of the three northern provinces of Korea have long had cultural and linguistic characteristics that have marked them as distinct from their brethren in the central area near the capital and in the southern provinces. Contributors to this book address the problem of amnesia regarding the subjectivity of the northern region of Korea in contemporary, historical and cultural discourses, which have largely been dominated by grand paradigms, such as modernization theory, the positivist perspective and Marxism. Through the use of storytelling, linguistic analysis and journal entries from turn-of-the-century missionaries and traveling Russians in addition to many varieties of unconventional primary sources, they creatively explore unfamiliar terrain while examining the culture, identity and regional distinctiveness of the northern region and its people. Sun Joo Kim is a professor of Korean history at Harvard University. She is the author of Marginality and Subversion in Korea.

Sun Joo Kim is Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History in the Department of

East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and director of Korea Institute, Harvard

University. She specializes in social and cultural history of Chos!n Korea. After

completing her college education from Yonsei University in South Korea in 1984, she

received an M.A. in 1992 and a Ph.D. in history in 2000 at the University of

Washington. She is the author of Marginality and Subversion in Korea: The Hong

Ky!ngnae Rebellion of 1812 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007) and editor

of The Northern Region of Korea: History, Identity, and

Culture (Seattle: Center for Korean Studies,

University of Washington, 2010). She has also

published in peer review journals such as Journal of

Asian Studies, Journal of Korean Studies, Harvard

Journal of Asiatic Studies, and Journal of Social History.

She has been the recipient of many grants from,

among others, ACLS, Korea Foundation, and SSRC.

Her current research interests are the regional

history of Korea’s northwest, historical memory,

everyday lives of people, and law and society