A variety of books published in the new millennium illustrate the experience of Americans in Korea and the experience of Koreans in America. Central to these experiences is cross-cultural contact, on both the personal and institutional levels. Hannah Kim’s rigorously researched monograph "Ties That Bind" succeeds in both respects. The book takes readers through several decades of cross-cultural contact, starting with the story of Philip Jaisohn, the first Korean American, going through the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of Korea through to the 1942 declaration of war by the U.S. against Japan and Korea's liberation in 1945. It also discusses the postwar era, including the start of Korea's international adoptions, in which over 160,000 children were sent overseas for adoption. The final chapter examines the 1955 murder of In-Ho Oh, a Korean international student beaten to death by a group of Black youths who had just been refused admittance to a dance at a local Episcopal church. The reaction to the murder by the Christian community in Philadelphia, as well as political leaders such as