Modern Korean Drama marks a major publishing event. Richard Nichols's book represents a significant contribution to the field of drama in the English-speaking world, which has long suffered from a dearth of well-translated materials not only from Korea, but also from Asia at large. The volume features an up-to-date list of plays hailing from a variety of dramatic traditions and encompassing several generations of authors, showcasing the dynamic development of dramatic traditions for the past half century. No other anthology of Korean drama has brought English readers such a vibrant snapshot of how Korean theater cultivated a distinctive brand of modernity hinging simultaneously on historical memories and contemporary social issues.

One of the book's highlights is the editor's introduction, which is written in an equally comprehensive and thorough manner. It features a panoramic overview of performance history, starting from pre-twentieth-century rituals, festivals, puppet shows, and mask performances and ending with the socioeconomic and cultural tangents that shape the performance practices of twenty-first-century Korea. The introduction serves as an excellent guide for those who are not familiar with Korean dramatic history, and also proves to be a valuable resource for experts, who are constantly in search of reliable teaching materials for courses on subjects such as global theater, East Asian drama, and Korean cultural studies.

The body of the book features seven plays, compiled in a way that provides readers with a fairly good sampling of the discursive dramatic voices that emerged in the aftermath of the North–South division in 1945. If Ch'a Pŏmsŏk's Burning Mountain (1962) and Pak Choyŏl's O Chang-gun's Toenail (1974) speak directly for the tragedy-ridden memories of the division of the nation, the Korean War, and ensuing loss of family members, three plays from the 1990s—Yi Manhŭi's Please Turn Off the Light (1992), Yi Kangbaek's A Feeling, Like Nirvana (1998), and Pak Kŭnhyŏng's In Praise of Youth (1999)—touch on the absurd existence of contemporary Koreans, whose lives schizophrenically straddle nostalgic mourning for a loss of humanity and haphazard compliance with the fast-changing value system and economic stratification. Finally, O T'aesŏk's Bellflower (1992) and Pae Samshik's Ch'oe Sŭngŭi (2004) look back on controversial historical figures as an intuitive way of accessing what seems to be an irrecoverable past in a pluperfect tense. Grouped together, these plays punctuate crucial steps in how Korean drama battled with and eventually localized Western dramatic traditions such as psychological realism, theater of the absurd, and docudrama.

Given that each dramatist's voice is distinctive from the others and that each play was commissioned to be translated by different individuals, readers are bound to perceive stylistic discrepancies in translation, which is a natural outcome of a project of this kind. Overall, the quality of translation is laudable, rendering these seminal texts with a liveliness and rhythm faithful to the original plays; yet the translations feel colloquial enough to make these works performable on stage.

The only wish one could make for a book of this scope would have been for the inclusion of a representative play from the 1980s, when small theaters sprawled around Taehangno area, channeling the younger generation's discontent with political and cultural oppression by the military government. To have inserted a play from this vital period in the development of modern Korean drama, such as Chronicles of the Han Family or Chilsu and Mansu, to name a few, would have streamlined the historical trajectory of this book more evenly.

The appendix, “Theater in Seoul,” is an interesting addition to the otherwise text-centric orientation of the book, as it provides snapshots of seminal performance venues, actors, directors, and designers that make up the energetic theater scene of today's Korean capital city. However, the appendix leaves much to be desired in terms of its brief yet selective introduction, as it leaves out the steady growth of regional theaters in recent years. As the editor notes in the preface, “To be sure, many dramas are written by those not residing in Seoul . . . and theater performances may be found in Inchŏn, Pusan, Taegu, and other cities in South Korea. But just as in the United States where the mecca for theater artists is New York City, sooner or later South Korean theater artists must make their mark in Seoul” (p. ix). While this may be true in general terms, it overlooks the ever-increasing influence of regional troupes, such as Incheon Metropolitan City Theater and Nodŭl, which strive to establish their own distinctive artistic vision rather than simply settling as second cities to Seoul.

But overall, Modern Korean Drama is a welcome addition not only to the field of Korean Studies, but also to the rapidly expanding area of Asian cultural studies at large. If one has to pick just one book, either to be initiated into the modern dramatic tradition of Korea or to teach Korean drama in classes such as world theater or Korean cultural studies, this is the right volume.