Cheehyung Harrison Kim
Associate Professor
Primary Field: Korea
Other Fields: East Asia, North Korea, socialism, labor, industrialism, everyday life, urban life, transnationality, visuality
Office: Sakamaki B403
Email: chk7@hawaii.edu | Phone: (808) 956-6761
Accepting new graduate students? TBD
BA The University of Texas at Austin, 1998; PhD Columbia University, 2010
Background
Cheehyung Harrison Kim’s research and teaching focus on socialism, labor, industrialism, everyday life, architecture, and urbanism in the context of East Asia and, in particular, North Korea. He received his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His research awards include the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellowship, and the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. His book Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953-1961 (Columbia University Press 2018) is about the experience of factory workers in postwar North Korea and about the transnational condition of industrialism that overwhelmed the entire modern world. His also serves as Editor of Korean Studies, a leading journal in the field; Book Series Editor of “Hawai‘i Studies on Korea”; Member of the University of Hawai‘i Press Editorial Board; Cooperating Graduate Faculty in the Department of Asian Studies; Member of Undergraduate Research Opportunities Council; and President of International Society for Korean Studies North America Branch.
Representative Publications
- Translation of Park Nohae’s Dawn of Labor (Nodong ŭi saebyŏk) (University of Hawai‘i Press 2024). With Brother Anthony An Sonjae.
- “Pyongyang Modern: Architecture of Multiplicity in Postwar North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 26.2 (2021): 271-296.
- Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953-1961 (Columbia University, 2018).
- “Kim Il Sung: Partisan from the Edges of Empire,” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism edited by Immanuel Ness and Zack Cope (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).
- “North Korea’s Vinalon City: Industrialism as Socialist Everyday Life,” Positions: Asia Critique 22.4 (2014).
- “Total, Thus Broken: Chuch’e Sasang and North Korea’s Terrain of Subjectivity.” The Journal of Korean Studies, 17.1 (2012).
Social Media
Find Harrison on Facebook and Academia.edu.

