[KS] Winner Announced: 2026 UC Berkeley Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies

[Kelsey R Wong]

ANNOUNCEMENT:
The 2026 Hong Yung Lee Book Award Winner

The Center for Korean Studies (CKS) <https://ieas.berkeley.edu/cks> at UC
Berkeley is honored to announce the 2026 winner of the UC Berkeley Hong
Yung Lee Book Award <https://ieas.berkeley.edu/cks/hylbookaward> in Korean
Studies: *Triangle Republics: Cross-Border Literary Transits between the
Cold War Koreas and Japan
<https://cup.columbia.edu/book/triangle-republics/9780231219846/>*
(Columbia University Press, 2025) by Professor I. Jonathan Kief (University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

*Triangle Republics* is a groundbreaking contribution to literary studies
of Korea and beyond, one that turns the production and circulation of texts
into the occasion for rethinking the impact of the Cold War on the Korean
peninsula and its diaspora.  Upending the conventional view of the Korean
division as one of separation and antagonism between two diametrically
opposed and mutually exclusive cultural spheres, the book reveals how North
and South Korean literature surreptitiously formed and transformed each
other through the Korean diaspora in Japan.  Following the circuit of
Korean texts via Japan from 1945 until the 1980s, Kief uncovers the
creative ways that writers, critics, and intellectuals crossed the
boundaries of nation, language, ideology, and genre to challenge Cold War
entrenchments.  This required tracking not only Korean language texts, but
also Japanese language ones, often published in obscure journals,
painstakingly gathered from multiple archives through rigorous research
employing cross-disciplinary tools and methods.  The result is a work that
changes not only what we know about Cold War Korean literature, but also
how we might write cultural and intellectual history when the nation-state
is no longer assumed to be its natural container.

An award ceremony
<https://events.berkeley.edu/cks/event/334103-hong-yung-lee-book-award-ceremony>
celebrating Professor Kief’s achievement will be held at UC Berkeley on
Thursday, March 4, 2027.

Established in 2022 to honor Berkeley Political Science Professor and
longtime CKS Chair Hong Yung Lee (1939-2017), each year this award and its
$10,000 prize recognizes a groundbreaking, English-language academic
monograph that advances Korean Studies by combining scholarly merit,
research prowess, and methodological innovation.  The award recognizes
Professor Lee's enduring influence on Korean Studies, but also commitment
to situating the field in a broad intellectual landscape.

The Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley is deeply grateful to all of
the authors and publishers who participated in this year’s competition.  We
would also like to thank Berkeley’s Korean Studies faculty for
participating in the first-round selection process; and especially this
year’s external second-round review committee: Suzy Kim (Rutgers), Sujung
Kim (Hopkins), and Youngju Ryu (Michigan).

We will soon make a separate announcement about next year’s competition,
which will be open to Korean Studies monographs published in 2025 and 2026.

~~~

*Kelsey R. Wong* (she/her)
Program Director
Center for Korean Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Banway Building
2111 Bancroft Way, Suite 549L
Berkeley, CA 94720
krwilliams at berkeley.edu

ieas.berkeley.edu/cks
facebook.com/UCBerkeleyCKS/
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