The Routledge History of Korean Science Fiction

The Routledge History of Korean Science Fiction offers the first comprehensive volume dedicated to the century-long evolution of speculative imagination on the Korean peninsula. It charts how a historically marginalized tradition has rapidly transformed into a mainstream global phenomenon.

Spanning a 120-year trajectory from 1907 to the present, the collection maps the genre through Korea’s turbulent modern history, including Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, national division, and the contemporary Korean Wave of popular culture. Moving far beyond traditional literary boundaries, it adopts a multimedia framework to analyze speculative themes across cinema, television dramas, webtoons, web novels, animation, and virtual reality art. It features topical case studies, such as the global cinematic triumphs of Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer) and groundbreaking subgenres like “Choson Steampunk,” feminist speculative fiction, and North Korean science fiction. The book highlights how Korean creators bypass Western imperialist tropes, focusing instead on localized geopolitical anxieties and rich Asian philosophical traditions.

This indispensable resource provides institutional scaffolding for an emerging field of study. It is tailored for university instructors, students, and researchers across Korean studies, popular culture, and global science fiction, while remaining highly accessible to readers eager to understand the cultural roots of the global Korean Wave.