[This Week’s Books] The Capitalism We Never Knew and More

The Capitalism We Never Knew

The word "capitalism" is used so often that it almost prevents us from questioning it at all. Michael Sonenscher suggests that before we adopt this familiar concept as merely the name of an economic system, we should retrace when and under what needs this term first emerged. By following the changing meanings of 'capitalism' from the late 18th to early 19th century, Sonenscher asks whether the private ownership of capital alone can fully explain the predicament of modern society. While Part 1 explores commercial society, the history of political thought, war and debt, loyalty to the monarchy, and labor rights, Part 2 brings back the ideas of Marx, Smith, Hegel, Ricardo, and Stein. Though the book is slim, the questions it asks are anything but small. Perhaps we've simply been using the wrong name for the problem all along.

The crux of Sonenscher's focus is how the term 'capitalism' has actually obscured the issues of division of labor and interdependence. While questions of ownership often conjure radical alternatives, imagining a world after the division of labor proves far more challenging. In a structure where some produce, some transport, some manage, and some incur debt, modern people are bound to each other. Thus, this book does not blunt the criticism of capitalism; rather, it aims to redirect that critical edge to a more precise target. Old questions, overshadowed under the weight of the word "capitalism," are revived afresh. (Written by Michael Sonenscher | Translated by Kim Mincheol | Published by May Spring Press)

Silver, the Metal of Desire

If gold is the metal of crowns, silver is the metal that traveled the world. Tilman Bendikowski approaches silver not just as a precious metal or investment asset but as a medium of desire that moved the Middle Ages and the modern era. After Columbus’s voyages, the vast quantities of silver mined in the Americas filled the treasuries of European courts and merchants, expanded the circuits of trade and finance, and eventually seeped into the homes of ordinary people. Even the chapter titles—“Prelude to Plunder,” “The Corrupt City of Silver,” “Silver Roaming the World,” and “The Curse of Silver”—reveal the book’s focus on the blood and sweat behind the shining metal, rather than its glittering physical properties.

The history of silver is not only that of beautiful tableware and ornaments but also of exploitation, slave labor, pirates, smuggling, and war funding. The author questions how a single silver spoon became a symbol of wealth and etiquette, and at the same time traces where that silver came from and whose hands it passed through before reaching the table. As such, readers catch a glimpse of the early moments of globalization by following the path of silver. While desire always seeks shiny surfaces, history records the wounds left behind those gleaming exteriors. Now that silver is again gaining attention as a raw material and investment, the author reveals the long-standing human costs attached to its price tag. (Written by Tilman Bendikowski | Translated by Choi Eunhee | Published by Open House)

Tokyo Producer

A city is not transformed only by the height of its buildings. Kazuhiko Yamamoto spent 40 years at Mori Building, witnessing the evolution of massive redevelopment projects such as Ark Hills, Roppongi Hills, Omotesando Hills, Toranomon Hills, and Azabudai Hills in Tokyo. "Tokyo Producer" is not a book boasting about a finished skyline; rather, it captures the complex processes by chronicling time spent in meeting rooms and association offices, design revisions and administrative negotiations, persuading rights holders, and running operations after completion. As the subtitle suggests, the heart of the matter is about "urban development that increases local value." It's not merely about constructing a single building but about examining how that building interacts with its surroundings to transform the order of a place.

What stands out is the use of the term “producer.” Here, a producer is not a planner coming up with stylish concepts but the person who continually aligns vision and funding, publicness and profitability, culture and rental income, administrative procedures, and the interests of residents. The book documents the 19-year journey of Ark Hills, the formation of consensus around Roppongi Hills’ cultural hub concept, and continues with Omotesando Hills, Ginza Six, and Toranomon Hills, offering an inside look at Japanese urban development. What lasts longer than Tokyo’s flamboyance is the perseverance required for these developments. A city is never completed with a single blueprint; it takes shape gradually as it weathers numerous competing interests. (Written by Kazuhiko Yamamoto | Translated by Kim Doyoung | Supervised by Park Jonghyun | Published by Envelope)

The Geography of Inequality

Even if people receive the same salary, the trajectory of their lives often changes according to their address. Junho Jeong reframes regional disparities not as a question of which region is underdeveloped, but as one of how power and capital, industry and opportunity, are spatially distributed. The core is the 'segmented factory economy,' which applies Doreen Massey's theory of spatial division of labor to Korea's economy. Headquarters, planning, R&D, and financial operations are concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, while industrial cities elsewhere focus on production and execution. In this structure, added value and decision-making authority continue to flow toward one side. The statistic that approximately 2,020 trillion won in cumulative production income shifted from non-capital regions to the capital area over the past 20 years numerically underlines the central question of this book.

A particularly acute point emerges when the focus shifts from income gaps to assets and finance. Relying on the Household Financial Welfare Survey from 2012 to 2025, the book examines the structure coupling income and assets, and through the surging apartment prices in the capital region and the so-called "Gangnam effect," shows how residential space becomes a quasi-financial asset. While salaries may be similar, one person’s income multiplies through rising housing prices and asset premiums, while another’s disappears through rent and loan interest. Thus, regional disparity is no longer just a local issue, and the real estate problem is not merely a market issue. The question this book leaves behind is uncomfortable: Has inequality in Korea only broken the social ladder, or has it fundamentally altered the ground on which the ladder stands? (Written by Junho Jeong | Published by Sanjini)

Ieung Ieung

In Kim Mella’s fiction, love often appears in strange forms: the “Jeokwi” filling subway cars, mischievous spirits guarding subway line 4, a person whose feelings for a woman shoot forth from their navel as beams of light, and bodies migrating briefly into another’s mind on the threshold of death. The third short story collection—including the winning piece “Ieung Ieung” from the 15th Young Writers’ Award—relaxes the boundaries between human and nonhuman, life and death, body and mind, through eight stories. In 'Why Is the Subway a Morning Star?,' the scene of protests for disabled persons’ mobility rights overlaps with a realm of monsters that feed on anger, while in ‘The Wet Eyes and Invincible Navel,’ emotions become tangible substances of scent and warmth.

These bizarre premises are not mere decoration, but ethical devices. Kim Mella does not explain pain but instead imagines how it touches another’s body. A single text message in “Zombie Palm Lines,” the issue of copyrights and songs in “Degeuda Utta Utta,” the unreachable star-like distance of “Waterlogged Letters,” and the sensation in “Mekkera Kkera” that breath may falter and rise again—all attempt to transcend the limits of the singular first-person body. Thus, the love depicted in this collection resembles not a romantic answer but a delicate circuit that persists even when the world is unbearably petty. Witty, amusing, sometimes perplexing, this oddness is precisely Kim Mella’s way of enduring sadness. (Written by Kim Mella | Published by Moonji Publishing)

The Biological Foundations of Bioethics

Debates in bioethics are often reduced to binary arguments. Should gene editing be permitted? To what extent should we allow embryo selection? How do treatment and enhancement differ? Tim Lewens asks a more fundamental question: are the "biological facts" we use for ethical judgments truly as neutral and clear-cut as we assume? As a philosophy of science professor at Cambridge, he narrows the gap between bioethics and the philosophy of biology, interrogating the conceptual premises behind familiar distinctions such as health and disease, normal and abnormal, natural and artificial, treatment and enhancement. The book covers a broad scope, from human enhancement and synthetic biology to germline intervention, embryo selection, genetic differences and distributive justice, Darwinism, and public policy.

Lewens neither uncritically fears biotechnology nor places blind trust in its ability to solve problems. Examining Michael Sandel’s argument for “openness to the unbidden,” Lewens points out that even when the boundary between therapy and enhancement is blurred, that distinction still has meaning. When discussing modafinil or gene modification, he treats the precautionary principle not as vague fear but as rational concern. Ethical judgments in bioethics do not automatically follow from scientific facts—yet ethics built without understanding concrete scientific mechanisms are equally weak. The book is not an easy read, but it has the power to move familiar bioethical debates away from mere moral intuition and toward conceptual rigor. (Written by Tim Lewens | Translated by Yoon Junghwan | Published by Seoyeon Biram)

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.