Remco Breuker is Professor of Korean Studies at Leiden University. His research spans medieval and modern Korea and Northeast Asia, with a particular focus on historiography, identity formation, borders, state formation, and the uses of history in contemporary politics. Combining historical analysis with public engagement, his work bridges premodern Korean history, contemporary Northeast Asian politics, and debates on academic freedom and human rights.

More information about Remco Breuker

Curriculum Vitae

Remco Breuker studied Korean Studies and Japanese Studies at Leiden University, graduating cum laude in both fields. Between 1998 and 2001 he pursued postgraduate coursework in Korean History at Seoul National University on a scholarship from the South Korean Ministry of Education. He completed his PhD in Korean Studies at Leiden University in 2006 under the supervision of Professor Boudewijn Walraven. His dissertation, When Truth is Everywhere: The Formation of Plural Identities in Early Koryŏ (918-1170), examined identity formation, historiography, and political pluralism in medieval Korea, and was published as a monograph, Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea (Brill, 2010).

Following his doctoral studies, Remco Breuker was appointed Research Fellow at the Australian National University (2007-2008) and subsequently received an NWO VENI grant for postdoctoral research at Leiden University (2008-2011). In 2011 he was appointed Professor of Korean Studies at Leiden University.

Between 2013 and 2018 Remco Breuker led the ERC-funded project War of Words: What Ancient Manchuria Does to South Korea and China Today, investigating competing historical claims and the contemporary politics of history in Northeast Asia. Between 2023 and 2024 he served as Distinguished Professor at Busan University of Foreign Studies in South Korea. In 2023, representing the department of Korean Studies, he received the Award for Contributions to the Research and Dissemination of Han’gul from the Prime Minister of South Korea, and in 2024 he received a Presidential Citation from the South Korean Ministry of Unification for his contributions to advancing human rights in North Korea.

Alongside his historical research, Remco Breuker is one of Europe’s leading experts on modern-day North Korea, particularly on overseas forced labour, human rights, and state-controlled labour systems. He has worked extensively with defectors, NGOs, journalists, policymakers, and international organizations to document North Korean forced labour networks and human rights abuses.

Remco Breuker has appeared on BBC, CNN, ABC, Al Jazeera, Nieuwsuur, and numerous other media outlets, and is also active as a columnist, documentary maker, podcaster, and translator of Korean literature. In 2025 he published De wereld volgens Noord-Korea and hosted the documentary series Big in Korea for Dutch public television. In 2026, De Kracht van middenmacht: het belang van Zuid-Korea, Taiwan en Japan voor onze democratische toekomst appeared, co-authored with Casper Wits. In this book, the argument is presented that Dutch and European security, prosperity, and peace are for a large part also dependent on our relations with the East Asian democratic middle powers of South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

Research

Remco Breuker’s research explores how historical narratives, identity formation, borders, and political legitimacy have shaped Korean and Northeast Asian societies across time. His early work focused on the medieval Koryŏ dynasty (918-1392), especially questions of pluralism, historiography, frontiers, and the relationship between Korea and neighbouring powers such as the Liao and Jin empires. His monograph Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea (Brill, 2010) offered a fundamentally revised interpretation of the Koryŏ state, arguing that Koryŏ’s pluralism decisively contributed to the formation of a region-transcending communal identity that enabled the dynasty to engage in civilizational competition with neighbouring Chinese and Manchurian states while maintaining domestic social and political stability. His broader scholarship on medieval Korea and Northeast Asia has examined borders, historical memory, imperial relations, and historiography.

A second major strand of Remco Breuker’s work investigates the political use of the past in modern Northeast Asia. His ERC-funded project War of Words: What Ancient Manchuria Does to South Korea and China Today (2013-2018) examined how competing historical claims concerning ancient Manchuria and frontier regions continue to influence contemporary relations between China and Korea. This work connected medieval historiography and territorial imagination with present-day debates on nationalism, historical ownership, and regional identity formation. Breuker’s work on the political uses of the past extends into the field of forgery studies. His monograph Forging the Past: Creative Deception and National Identity in Medieval Korea (2008) deals with the forged nature of one of the Koryŏ state’s constitutive texts, the Ten Injunctions. In it, he argues that forgeries such as this often exercise a formative influence on processes such as identity formation and should hence be taken seriously as historical sources, not merely discarded as forgeries.

Remco Breuker has also developed an influential body of research on modern-day North Korea, focusing on forced labour, overseas labour networks, human trafficking, authoritarian governance, and human rights discourses. Together with legal scholars, NGO researchers, and policymakers, he led projects including Slaves to the System and People for Profit, documenting North Korean forced labour in Europe and global supply chains. His work contributed to debates in the Dutch and European parliaments, informed proceedings at the International Labour Organization, and were discussed at hearings in the European Parliament and national legislatures.

Among Remco Breuker’s most recent major scholarly publications are two annotated translations of foundational texts in Korean literary and historical tradition. In 2025, he co-edited and contributed to the first fully annotated English translation of the Samguk yusa (Vestiges of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea), one of the most important premodern sources for Korean history, mythology, and cultural identity, produced with Boudewijn Walraven and Grace Koh and building on the pioneering work of Frits Vos. In 2026, he published Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip, a translated and annotated selection of works by Yi Kyubo (1168-1241), the foremost writer of the Koryŏ dynasty, offering insight into both literary production and statecraft in thirteenth-century Korea.

Teaching

Remco Breuker teaches courses in Korean history, Classical Chinese texts from premodern Korea, East Asian historiography and misinformation, and human rights discourses on North Korea at the BA, MA, and Research MA levels. He also teaches and supervises research on Korean cinema and literature, translation studies, and broader East Asian history, politics, culture, and society. 

In addition, Remco Breuker has taught courses on Korean cinema, Korean literature, transnational history, translation studies, and East Asian history. He also supervises BA and MA theses as well as numerous PhD dissertations on Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and broader East Asian history, politics, culture, and society.

Grants and awards

• 2024 | Presidential Citation for Human Rights Advancement in North Korea (President of South Korea, Ministry of Unification)
• 2023 | Award for Contributions to the Research and Dissemination of Han’gul (Prime Minister of South Korea)
• 2013-2018 | European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant: War of Words: What Ancient Manchuria Does to South Korea and China Today
• 2013 | Secured funding for the Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC) with Prof. Katarzyna Cwiertka and Prof. Frank Pieke (Vaes Elias Stichting)
• 2008-2013 | Korean Studies Strategic Initiative Grant with Prof. Boudewijn Walraven and Dr Koen De Ceuster (Academy of Korean Studies)
• 2008-2011 | NWO VENI Grant
• 2010 | KNAW Heineken Young Scientist Award for History (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)

Activities