Inaugurated in 2022 to honor the late Professor Hong Yung Lee, this Award acknowledges books (and authors) that make significant contributions to the field of Korean Studies. The competition is flexible in regards to academic discipline, and encompasses not only the conventional areas of Korean Studies (i.e., humanities, arts and media, and social sciences) but also Korean Studies texts that engage the Korean diaspora and/or comparative approaches.
$10,000 will be awarded each year to the author(s) whose nonfiction English-language academic monograph demonstrates outstanding scholarly merit, research prowess, and methodological innovation. Again, the Award is not limited to any discipline or subject. It recognizes Professor Lee's enduring influence on Korean Studies, but also commitment to situating the field in a broad intellectual landscape.
This Award was launched with the generous support of Whakyung Choi Lee.
2027 Competition Deadline: January 15, 2027
Eligibility: Korean Studies Books published in 2025 and 2026
Who Can Submit: Publishers or Authors
How to Submit: Send a digital version of the book (if available) by email to cks@berkeley.edu and/or a physical copy to the following address for consideration:
Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies
Center for Korean Studies
Banway Building
2111 Bancroft Way, Suite 549L
Berkeley, CA 94720
Digital submissions are preferred. If submitting only a physical copy, please send an accompanying email to cks@berkeley.edu with the name of the author and title of the book.
Books submitted for the prior year competition that did not win and whose publication dates fall within the specified range of eligibility will be automatically reconsidered.
Review Process: All submissions will undergo a preliminary review by the Koreanist faculty at UC Berkeley. Subsequently, the Center for Korean Studies will form an independent external review committee composed of representatives from the field of Korean Studies outside UC Berkeley to review and assess the finalists’ books and select the winner.
The result will be announced in the fall of 2027, followed by an award ceremony in the spring of 2028 featuring a special lecture by the awardee(s) and an invited scholar respondent’s presentation at the Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley.
Inquiries may be directed to: cks@berkeley.edu
Triangle Republics: Cross-Border Literary Transits Between the Cold War Koreas and Japan
Columbia University Press, 2025
Professor I. Jonathan Kief (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
In Korea, the end of the Second World War in 1945 brought both liberation from Japanese colonial rule and the division of the nation by the triumphant Allies. The peninsula was not only decoupled from its former colonial metropole but also carved up into two halves that were subsequently incorporated into the rival blocs of the emerging Cold War order. Although the two Koreas are typically seen as isolated from each other, texts continued to circulate between them—with the assistance of Korean diasporic and other colleagues in Japan—throughout the ensuing decades.
I. Jonathan Kief follows the triangular flow of texts linking North Korea, South Korea, and Japan from 1945 until the 1980s, revealing overlooked paths of interaction and exchange. He highlights the creative ways in which poets, playwrights, novelists, critics, and academics crossed boundaries of language, ideology, genre, and geography to challenge the stability of the Cold War. By showing how writers in North and South Korea engaged in dialogue via the mediation of a multiethnic set of colleagues in Japan, Triangle Republics offers a new perspective on this era, emphasizing its vibrant, dynamic, and interconnected nature.
I. Jonathan Kief is an associate professor of Korean studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
| 2026 |
Triangle Republics: Cross-Border Literary Transits Between the Cold War Koreas and Japan |
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| 2025 |
Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War |
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| 2024 |
Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Choson Diplomacy with Ming China |
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| 2023 |
Language and Truth in North Korea |
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| 2022 |
Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday |
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The late Prof. Hong Yung Lee (1939-2017) taught political science at Yale University and UC Berkeley. As Chair of the Center for Korean Studies in the formative years from the 1990s into the 2000s, he had a profound impact on the development of Korean Studies at UC Berkeley. He was also the first tenured Korean faculty member in the social sciences hired by the university. A scholar of comparative studies of East Asian politics and culture, Prof. Lee wrote numerous landmark articles about Korea in the English, Korean, and Chinese languages in addition to ground-breaking monographs about Chinese politics such as The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China. A more detailed remembrance of Prof. Lee's life and work can be found here.