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Books : History : Asia : Korea : South : General
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Don Oberdorfer has written a gripping narrative history of Korea's travails and triumphs over the past three decades. The Two Koreas places the tensions between North and South within a historical context, with a special emphasis on the involvement of outside powers.
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The rise of South Korea is one of the most unexpected and inspirational developments of the latter part of our century. A few decades ago, the Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one generation they came out of the fields and into Silicon Valley. In 1997, this powerhouse of a nation reeled and almost collapsed as a result of a weak financial system and heavily indebted conglomerates. The world is now watching to see whether the Koreans will be able to reform and continue their stunning growth.
Although Korea has only recently found itself a part of the global stage, it is a country with a rich and complex past. Early history shows that Koreans had a huge influence on ancient Japan, and their historic achievements include being the first culture to use metal movable type for printing books. However, much of their history is less positive; it is marred with political violence, poverty, and war-aspects that would sooner be forgotten by the Koreans, who are trying to focus on their promising future.
The fact that Korean history has eluded much of the world is unfortunate, but as Korea becomes more of a global player, understanding and appreciation for this unique nation has become indispensable.
In The Koreans, Michael Breen provides an in-depth portrait of the country and its people. an early overview of the nature and values of the Korean people provides the background for a more detailed examination of the complex history of the country, in particular its division into the Communist north and pro-Western south.
In this absorbing and enlightening account of the Koreans, Michael Breen provides compelling insight into the history and character of this fascinating nation.
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When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, Otto Apel was a surgical resident living in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife and three young children. A year later he was chief surgeon of the 8076th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital constantly near the front lines in Korea.Immediately upon arriving in camp, Apel performed 80 hours of surgery. His feet swelled so badly that he had to cut his boots off, and he saw more surgical cases in those three and a half days than he would have in a year back in Cleveland.
In addition to his own story, Apel answers the questions anyone interested in a MASH unit would ask: What were the operating conditions like? What was a typical work load? What level of care did patients get? How did the doctors, nurses, and enlisted personnel get along? And, perhaps most obviously, how realistic was the TV series?
Along the way, he tells the history of the MASH and the appalling lack of training received by the newly drafted doctors staffing those units. He also reveals many significant medical innovations in emergency medical care, from advances in arterial repair to the use of blood plasma in the treatment of hemorrhagic shock.
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Lady Hyegyong's memoirs, which recount the chilling murder of her husband by his father, is one of the best known and most popular classics of Korean literature. From 1795 until 1805 Lady Hyegyong composed this masterpiece, which depicts a court life whose drama and pathos is of Shakespearean proportions. Presented in its social, cultural, and historical contexts, this first complete English translation opens a door into a world teeming with conflicting passions, political intrigue, and the daily preoccupations of a deeply intelligent and articulate woman.
JaHyun Kim Haboush's accurate, fluid translation captures the intimate and expressive voice of this consummate storyteller. The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong is a unique exploration of Korean selfhood and of how the genre of autobiography fared in premodern times.
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This book explains the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism, which is based on the sense of a shared bloodline and ancestry. Belief in a racially distinct and ethnically homogeneous nation is widely shared on both sides of the Korean peninsula, although some scholars believe it is a myth with little historical basis. Finding both positions problematic and treating identity formation as a social and historical construct that has crucial behavioral consequences, this book examines how such a blood-based notion has become a dominant source of Korean identity, overriding other forms of identity in the modern era. It also looks at how the politics of national identity have played out in various contexts in Korea: semicolonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization.
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In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history of the minjung ("common people's") movement in South Korea, Namhee Lee shows how the movement arose in the 1970s and 1980s in response to the repressive authoritarian regime and grew out of a widespread sense that the nation's "failed history" left Korean identity profoundly incomplete. The Making of Minjung captures the movement in its many dimensions, presenting its intellectual trajectory as a discourse, its impact as a political movement, as well as raising questions about how intellectuals represented the minjung. Lee's portrait is based on a wide range of sources: underground pamphlets, diaries, court documents, contemporary newspaper reports, and interviews with participants.Thousands of students and intellectuals left universities during this period and became factory workers, forging an intellectual-labor alliance perhaps unique in world history. At the same time, minjung cultural activists reinvigorated traditional folk theater, created a new "minjung literature," and impacted religious practices and academic disciplines. In its transformative scope, the minjung phenomenon is comparable to better-known contemporaneous movements in South Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.
Understanding the minjung movement is essential to understanding South Korea's recent resistance to U.S. influence. Along with its well-known economic transformation, South Korea has also had a profound social and political transformation. The minjung movement drove this transformation and this book tells its story comprehensively and critically.
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Extraordinary political and economic changes have rocked the Republic of Korea over the past fifty years. John Oh, a Korean-born political scientist, has written a clear and insightful account of government and politics throughout this turbulent period. His chronological and thematic study analyzes both the conflicts between authoritarian forces and populist/democratic elements and the nation's determined efforts to achieve economic growth. In relating Korea's transformation to a democratic society and an industrial state, Oh explains how the country's politics and economy are interrelated. He covers the launching of the first democratic republic, the emergence of military regimes, and the growth of the middle class and the civil society. He also reveals the causes of collusion between political and economic groups which led to corruption, structural anomalies, and economic crises. Korean Politics is the first English-language book to draw on original Korean-language sources including testimonies from the trials of former presidents in its analysis of their military-dominated governments. The book concludes with succinct discussions on the first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition leader, Kim Dae-jung. Timely and authoritative, it is an ideal classroom text and an indispensable reference on contemporary Korea.
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For more than half of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two hostile and competitive nation-states, each claiming to be the sole legitimate expression of the Korean nation. The division remains an unsolved problem dating to the beginnings of the Cold War and now projects the politics of that period into the twenty-first century. Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey is designed to provide readers with the historical essentials upon which to unravel the complex politics and contemporary crises that currently exist in the East Asian region. Beginning with a description of late-nineteenth-century imperialism, Michael Robinson shows how traditional Korean political culture shaped the response of Koreans to multiple threats to their sovereignty after being opened to the world economy by Japan in the 1870s. He locates the origins of both modern nationalism and the economic and cultural modernization of Korea in the twenty years preceding the fall of the traditional state to Japanese colonialism in 1910.Robinson breaks new ground with his analysis of the colonial period, tracing the ideological division of contemporary Korea to the struggle of different actors to mobilize a national independence movement at the time. More importantly, he locates the reason for successful Japanese hegemony in policies that included--and thus implicated--Koreans within the colonial system. He gives readers access as well to an understanding of the unique aspects of Japanese colonialism in Korea--in particular how the relatively intensive economic development of the colony in the mid-1930s laid the foundation for subsequent development of human resources as well as the economy of the postwar period. Robinson concludes with a discussion of the political and economic evolution of South and North Korea after 1948 that accounts for the valid legitimacy claims of both nation-states on the peninsula. He thus carefully analyzes the sources of authoritarianism in South Korea while detailing its relationship to stunning economic growth after 1960 and to the democracy movement through the 1970s and 1980s. He closes with a description of South Korean politics, noting that although procedural democracy triumphed after 1987, the development of a true pluralism representing all interest groups remains a work in progress.
Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey succinctly and deftly captures the key contours of the country's past. Its balanced analytical narrative of the historical forces that shaped the political, economic, and social dynamics of the two Koreas make it a first-rate introduction to modern Korea and an excellent companion to courses on modern Korean society, politics, and history.
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-- Far Eastern Economic Review
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Praise for Korea: The First War We Lost "This.fast-moving study is the first to be written by a professional army historian.superb.capably challenges many of the traditional interpretations." -Library Journal "The best overview of the Korean conflict since Fehrenbach's This Kind of War...a balanced, perceptive accounting..." -Kirkus Review "A desirable acquisition for most military collections." -ALA Booklist "Bevin Alexander...argues in this well-researched and readable book that the United States fought two wars in Korea, winning one against North Korea and losing the other to Communist China." -The New York Times Book Review
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While most analyses of Korean politics have looked to elites to explain political change, this new and revised edition of Korean Society examines the role of ordinary people in this dramatic transformation. Taking the innovative theme of 'civil society' - voluntary organizations outside the role of the state which have participated in the process of political and social democratization - the essays collected here examine Korea as one of the most dramatic cases in the world of ordinary citizens participating in the transformation of politics.
Key topics are discussed including:
*Comparisons of Korean democratization to the experiences of post-authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world
*Comparisons of the theory of civil society as developed in Western Europe and America
*The legacy of Korea's Confucian past for contemporary politics and society
*Close examinations of various civil society movements
*South Korea and North Korea
Conceptually innovative, up-to-date and timely, the new edition of this book will be an invaluable resource for students of contemporary Korea, Asian politics and the global struggle for democracy.
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This is the first book of its kind to survey the history of religion in Korea from c.600 BC to the present day. Setting the native Korean religions--Shamanism or Musok-kyo--Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity (both Catholicism and Protestantism), the New Religions, and Islam firmly within the socio-political context of each major historical period, Grayson traces the important developments which occurred simultaneously within each religious tradition. In addition, the book provides a complete index listing myths of some of the ancient states.
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South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force that is even challenging some Japanese industries. This timely book examines South Korean growth as an example of "late industrialization," a process in which a nation's industries learn from earlier innovator nations, rather than innovate themselves. Discussing state intervention, shop floor management, and big business groups, Amsden explores the reasons for South Korea's phenomenal growth, paying special attention to the principle of reciprocity in which the government imposes strict performance standards on those industries and companies that it aids. She thereby shows how South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan were able to grow faster than other emerging nations such as Brazil, Turkey, India, and Mexico.
With its new insights, Asia's Next Giant is essential reading for anyone concerned with global competition and the world economy.
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Despite the passage of over forty years since the official end of the civil war in Korea, the north and the south sections of the country remain technically at war. In Korea and Its Futures, Roy Richard Grinker argues that the continued conflict between North and South Korea, and the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula, must be understood within the broader social and cultural contexts in which Koreans live. Grinker suggests that a fundamental obstacle to peace on the peninsula is that South Korea has become a nation in which nearly all aspects of economic, political, and cultural identity are defined in opposition to North Korea. He further demonstrates that in spite of its status as a sacred goal for all Koreans, the idea of unification threatens the world in which almost every South Korean has been born and raised. In chapters on defectors, divided families, student protests, and early education, Grinker reveals how South Korean conceptions of unification prevent either side from recognizing that a unified Korea must also be a diverse Korea. In other words, Grinker points out, unification is largely perceived by South Koreans not as the integration of different identities but as the southern conquest and assimilation of the north – in short, as winning the war. Korea and Its Futures is a critical and illuminating look at a conflict which has refused to yield despite changes in a post-Cold War world.
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Designed as a helpful reference tool for both Asian specialists and students and scholars in the broader fields of diplomatic history and foreign relations, this comprehensive historical dictionary contains a series of in-depth essays which describe the diplomatic, political, and military developments sorrounding the Korean War. The volume concentrates on the period of conventional war from the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950 through the signing of the armistice agreement on July 27, 1953, although key developments prior to the formal outbreak of hostilities also receive attention. Written by a distinguished group of contributors from eight countries, the entries cover all of the significant people, controversies, military operations, and policy pronouncements of the era. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order, with cross references in the text of each to assist users interested in learning about related items. In certain subject areas entries appear in groups, such as battles, military operations, United Nations resolutions, and the activities of major participants, most notably Douglas MacArthur, Harry S. Truman, and Syngman Rhee. References at the end of each entry serve as a guide for readers desiring additional information. Throughout, the dictionary uses the spelling of Korean and Chinese names common at the time of the war to minimize confusion among non-specialists. Six appendices provide statistical information, a personnel summary, a list of acronyms, a chronology of events, a selection of maps, and a bibliography. The Historical Dictionary of the Korean War will be an excellent resource for public and academic libraries, historians, and students.
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How do people make sense of their world in the face of the breakneck speed of contemporary social change? Through the lives and narratives of eight women, The Melodrama of Mobility chronicles South Korea's experience of just such dizzyingly rapid development. Abelmann captures the mood, feeling, and language of a generation and an era while providing a rare window on the personal and social struggles of South Korean modernity. Drawing also from television soap operas and films, she argues that a melodramatic sensibility speaks to South Korea's transformation because it preserves the tension and ambivalence of daily life in unsettled times. The melodramatic mode helps people to wonder: Can individuals be blamed for their social fates? How should we live? Who can say who is good or bad? By combining the ethnographic tools of anthropology, an engagement with prevailing sociological questions, and a literary approach to personal narratives, The Melodrama of Mobility offers a rich portrait of the experience of compressed modernity in the non-West.