Publisher's Synopsis
Describes the multifaceted ways 'tradition' is produced and consumed within the frame of contemporary Korean life and how these processes are enabled by different apparatuses of modernity that Koreans first encountered in the early twentieth century. It offers a unique insight into how and why different signifiers of 'Korea' have come to be valued as tradition in the present tense, the distinctive histories and contemporary anxieties that undergird this process, and how Koreans today experience their sense of a common Korean past.