PRIMITIVE SELVES: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945, by E. Taylor Atkins. University of California Press, 2010, 280 pp., $24.95 (paper)

While pop-culture industry insiders reputedly hate the term, and discussion of it has generally waned in Korea, the "Korean Wave" remains inescapable in discussions of Korean pop culture — especially within the Asia-Pacific region where the Korean entertainment industry remains not only a popular import, but also a major influence on pop-culture production.

It may surprise some — in Korea and elsewhere — to realize that the recent "Korean Wave" of the last decade is not historically singular.

In wonderfully clear prose and with considerable academic rigor, "Primitive Selves" focuses on what Atkins calls, in the title of his final chapter, "The First K-Wave," situating it in the context of Japan's colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula, as well as contemporaneous colonial practices worldwide.