Kyeong-Hee Choi

Kyeong-Hee Choi is an Associate Professor of Modern Korean Literature at the University of Chicago, with primary appointments in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on Korean Studies, where she serves as Chair. Her interdisciplinary work also connects with the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. Key areas of her scholarly engagement include:

• Modern Korean Literature and History
• Japanese Colonial Rule and its Legacies
• National Division and the Korean War
• Cold War and Democratization in Korea
• Gender and Publication Culture

Professor Choi's research investigates the interplay between publication culture and Korea's tumultuous modern history. She examines how Japanese colonial censorship shaped modern Korean literature both physically and substantively, and how separate literary canons emerged in North and South Korea after 1945. Her work consistently integrates gender analysis and views literary texts as embodied entities reflecting historical traumas and social change.

Her publications, spanning from 1999 to the forthcoming 2025 book, demonstrate a deepening exploration of censorship and literary production in colonial and post-colonial Korea. Early works analyzed specific texts and authors (e.g., Kang Kyŏng’ae, Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi), while later research expanded to systemic studies of censorship institutions. The current book project synthesizes decades of research on how colonial censorship policies continued to influence South Korean publishing after liberation.