Park, Hyun Ok

PERSONAL:

Education: University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1994.

CAREER:

Academic and writer. New York University, assistant professor in the Institute of East Asian Studies and the department of sociology.

WRITINGS:

Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hyun Ok Park earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. She is an assistant professor at New York University in New York City, teaching East Asian studies and sociology and has written many papers about Korean society.

Park's book Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria takes its title from a traditional Korean saying: "Bedfellows sleep in the same bed but have different dreams," Mariko Asano Tamanoi noted in a review for Pacific Affairs. Focusing on an area in Manchuria, China, settled by Koreans in the early twentieth century, during the time just before and after the Japanese took control of it, Park examines how capitalist influences affected Korean immigrants in the form of land privatization.

In the early twentieth century, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans viewed Manchuria as a land of possibilities. Few people lived there, but the land was good for farming, and there were many mineral resources available. Koreans who immigrated there saw it as an opportunity to own land and better their economic condi- tions, but Park states that they did this by behaving in ways contrary to both laws and state policies. She examines how the Koreans formed ethnically based systems and organized private property rights. When the Japanese took over in 1931, it was the Korean community that provided the excuses needed to create a puppet state and form the basis of the Japanese Empire.

Critics praised Park's book for drawing on multiple Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sources to explore an underexamined subject of history, and for addressing the equally neglected issue of capitalistic influences on the state of East Asia. In a review of Two Dreams in One Bed for the Historian, Michael J. Seth wrote, "This book is a useful addition to the literature in several ways. It points out the complexity and fluidity of national identity and the role that both colonialism and global capitalism have played in its formation; it deals with an important region and time in East Asian history that tends to be neglected." Tamanoi stated that Two Dreams in One Bed provides "richness and complexity to the scholarship of Manchuria and, … to the scholarship of East Asia." Calling the book an "important contribution to the scholarship of both imperial and post-imperial East Asia," Tamanoi added that it "promotes the view of transnational and multiracial Manchuria that has been squarely based on global capitalism since the very beginning of the age of empire."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December 1, 2006, Rana Mitter, review of Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria, p. 1489.

Contemporary Sociology, March 1, 2007, David Wolff, review of Two Dreams in One Bed, p. 177.

Historian, March 22, 2007, Michael J. Seth, review of Two Dreams in One Bed, p. 138.

International History Review, March 1, 2007, David Wolff, review of Two Dreams in One Bed, p. 168.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, September 22, 2007, Steven I. Levine, review of Two Dreams in One Bed, pp. 334-335.

Korea Journal, March 22, 2007, "A Big Challenge in the Manchurian Scene," review of Two Dreams in One Bed, p. 233.

Pacific Affairs, June 22, 2006, Mariko Asano Tamanoi, review of Two Dreams in One Bed, p. 306.

ONLINE

University of California, Berkeley Institute East Asian Studies Web site,http://ieas.berkeley.edu/ (April 11, 2006), synopsis of Two Dreams in One Bed and author biography.

Radical Philosophy Web site,http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/ (July 30, 2008), short author biography.