This volume contributes to the emerging field of Asian-German studies by bringing together internationally respected scholars from three continents for an interdisciplinary collection of chapters covering cultural, political, and historical intersections of Germany and Korea from the late nineteenth century until well into the twenty-first century. Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea treats the history of the German-Korean relationship with a focus on the nations’ perceptions of each other from the start of diplomatic intercourse in 1883 , through the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910–1945), the Cold War , German reunification, to the present. Examination especially of the increasing number of commonalities between formerly divided Germany and presently divided Korea allows this volume to showcase aspects of a transnational relationship that arguably makes Germany and Korea as similar as Germany and Japan , two countries for which scholars have found countless grounds for comparison since the late nineteenth century. Like previous volumes on Germany and China and Germany and Japan in the Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies, ¹ this volume emphasizes transnational encounters, as they apply to Germany and Korea, while making a gesture toward more clearly comparative studies. With chapters covering such topics as culture, diplomacy , education , history, migration, literature, film , philosophy, politics, and the stereotypes that have come from cultural division, this book seeks to move beyond traditional dichotomies between East and West and expose deeper affinities between the two nations, despite the differing ways that each has navigated the challenges of modernity .

Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea presents various overt commonalities of experience between Germany and Korea from the late nineteenth century to the present, while also teasing out many of the more subtle similarities between these two nations on nearly opposite sides of the globe. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Germany and Korea were arguably as different as two nations could be, but their relationship began through both the German exploration of East Asia and also the Korean study of German as a language of European culture and scientific achievement. Indirectly, the relationship continued via Japanese occupation (1910–1945), since Japan had long held Germany (especially Prussia) to be a model for its own project of Westernization . Over the course of the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century, Korea repeatedly witnessed the impact of German culture on their increasingly powerful Asian neighbor in Japan’s successes against the other two major cultural forces in the region, China and Russia .

Within a few years after the end of World War II , both nations became divided due to Cold War politics. South Korea and West Germany , on the one hand, and North Korea and East Germany , on the other hand, began to develop special relationships. The South Korean-West German relationship became cemented through their common Cold War division, South Koreans ’ strong interest in German culture and scholarship, as well as through West Germany’s recruitment of South Korean Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in the 1960s and 1970s. However, their relationship was briefly tested due to the East Berlin Espionage Affair in the late 1960s. In recent years, the rapid growth of the South Korean economy has deepened their economic ties. In the 1950s and 1960s, East German and North Korean relations became close through economic aid and on the basis of educational and technical ties. From around that time, however, due to Kim Il-Sung ’s Juche (“self-reliance”) ideology , North Koreans increasingly pursued an independent course in their economy and politics, which ultimately led to the weakening of North Korea’s relationship with the former Soviet bloc countries, including East Germany. This shared tension of the Koreas and Germanies over being torn apart according to different ideologies not only grounds deeper comparison of Germany and Korea, but also unifies the various chapters of this volume. One day we may find that the lessons that reunified Germany has had to learn provide the perfect model for North and South Korea , should they strive simply to become “Korea” once again.

This volume grapples with questions of entangled history to explore the ways in which Germany and Korea are united in their struggle to achieve a sense of cultural unity and ultimately to overcome the effects of political division. Moreover, Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea participates in recent developments in scholarship on the German-speaking world and East Asia , as evidenced in various books about Germany and China and Germany and Japan . To name just a few cases in point, we find Christian Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich’s Japanese -German Relations (2006), Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock’s Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia (2014) , and Veronika Fuechtner and Mary Rhiel’s Imagining Germany Imaging Asia (2013). ² In addition, Suzanne Marchand’s well known work German Orientalism in the Age of Empire (2009) ³ has created a more general context within which to place the aforementioned publications on more specific topics that treat Asian-German relations.

In the following pages of this introduction, we will explain our transnational framework, present a historiographical overview of Korean-German relations, and point out key arguments of chapters in this volume. For scholars of German-Korean relations, this volume will seek to offer an English-language overview of many well-known points harder to find in one single volume for an English-reading audience. For the many who have little prior knowledge of the unusual series of conjunctions between these two peoples and cultures, the volume will endeavor to initiate an ever broader scholarly debate on the innumerable points of contact between the German-speaking world and the Koreas.