Nan Kim is Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is the Faculty Lead for the Working Group on Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the Center for 21st Century Studies.

• Part IChapter 1: Historicizing Korea’s Geopolitical LiminalityChapter 2: Fateful Passages, In-Between StatesPart IIChapter 3: Anti-CommemorationsChapter 4: Threshold Rituals of ReconciliationPart IIIChapter 5: Impossible ReturnsChapter 6: Ethical TraversalsConclusion: Meeting with the PastEpilogue: The Afterlife of Division

This is the finest book I know on the intricate politics and social situation of Korean separated families. Relying ably on a mix of historical and ethnographic methods, and drawing on perspectives ranging from psychoanalytic treatments of mourning to ritual theory, Kim moves from the origins of family separation before and during the Korean War and the political classifications it entailed to various attempts to reunite such families across the North-South divide. The book culminates with an on-the-spot examination of the series of reunions that began in the year 2000, at a moment of hope for broader inter-Korean rapprochement, which Kim persuasively argues was also a crucial event in the reckoning of national kinship. In turns critical, analytically innovative, and moving, Kim’s work deserves to be read by every student of the modern Koreas.