Korean political economy as a field of study is interdisciplinary in nature, comprising research by scholars within development studies, heterodox economics, politics, geography, sociology, anthropology, and beyond. By extension, its boundaries are often disjointed, fuzzy, and overlapping. This situation raises challenges for tracking progress and taking stock of the field in a manner that renders this material coherent for area studies in general and Korean studies in particular. Nonetheless, four recent books provide the rare opportunity to raise a number of salient issues regarding the orientation of this inchoate field for a Korean studies audience. While by no means representative of the broad swath of work that might fall under the category of Korean political economy, these books nonetheless raise a number of important questions about what has been missing in the study of Korea’s political economy, how the field and the phenomenon itself are changing, and where it might...

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