Cross-border Interactions and Encounters between Germany and Korea

Cross-Border Interactions and Encounters between Germany and Korea offers a rich, interdisciplinary examination of the evolving relationships between Korea and Germany, illuminating a dynamic yet often overlooked field of study.
Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines, the volume traces how migration, cultural exchange, and intellectual transfer have produced layered and shifting forms of connection between the two contexts.
Across three thematically organized sections, the book moves from lived experience to cultural production to institutional and discursive representation. The first part examines Korean migration in Germany, highlighting how diasporic identities are negotiated through race, family life, labor, and entrepreneurship, and how new migratory patterns are reshaping established Korean communities. The second part turns to cultural interactions, exploring how artistic practices, ethnographic collections, and translation mediate and transform understandings of “Korean culture” in German contexts and beyond. The final section investigates representation in media and academia, analyzing how ideas, historical events, and scholarly traditions are interpreted, contested, and institutionalized across national borders.
Taken together, these contributions reveal cross-border exchange not as a linear process of influence, but as a multidirectional field of encounters shaped by power, memory, creativity, and negotiation. By foregrounding both historical depth and contemporary developments, the volume offers new insight into how transnational relationships are produced and reimagined over time.
In doing so, it not only advances Korean–German studies but also demonstrates why examining such entangled, transnational dynamics is essential for understanding cultural globalization in a more nuanced and grounded way.