Book Review: The Dawn of Modern Korea

Title: The Dawn of Modern Korea
Author: Andrei Lankov
Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: EunHaeng NaMu (December 10, 2007)
ISBN-10: 895660214X
ISBN-13: 978-8956602141

Dawn of Modern Korea is a light collection of beefed-up articles originally published at the Korea Times by North Korean expert and Kookmin University professor Andrei Lankov. The collection reads smoothly cover to cover as well as in a non-contiguous manner. Curious about the establishment of the Blue House, telephones or Chilsung Cider? Turn to the chapter and have at it. This book is full of firsts and more than likely whatever you're thinking of is bound to be in here.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is the inclusion of both romanization systems. When a new term is introduced in Korean, the author provides the word in both the McCune–Reischauer and Revised Romanization. I hope other authors follow this trend in absence of printing the actual word in Korean in parathesis.

One also has to respect a man whose first language is not English to write such a good book. Having said that, there is a certain flair that is missing from this book. The articles are a bit formulaic and somewhat dry. The point gets across but there's little fun in getting from point A to point B. The occasional turn of phrase and tongue-in-cheek reference are delightfully appreciated but they are few and far between.

In addition, the photos included are a mixed blessing. They compliment the book nicely and appropriately in many cases but in several articles they just seem so out of place. In one instance the subject was about the original author of the national anthem but the included photo was of an intersection. Furthermore the cover of the book is used twice - one quite appropriately about the first automobile and the other for a section on prostitution. One can't help but get the 'working the street corner' vibe from this curious choice.

If it sounds like I'm ripping the book apart rest assure that I had a blast reading it. Although Lankov's writing style isn't my favorite, I like Lankov's approach and choice of topics. The histories more than make up for whatever writing flair may or may not be missing from this excellent collection of firsts. It's a good read and well worth reading.

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It's a shame that this book might get compared to Robert Neff's arguably better recent publication because this book is good in its own right. I like both for similar reasons but I still prefer Neff's depth and story-telling ability over Lankov's 'just the facts, ma'am' overview. Plus, Lankov's book had a few more typographical errors than is usually acceptable for a print. When the error count gets to be close to ten, it gets harder to forgive.

But like I mentioned, this is still a good read full of great history and well worth picking up for anyone looking for an introduction to Korea's transition to modernity. Professor Lankov's work is indeed a stand alone accomplishment with a wide appeal.

Book Review: The Founding of Catholic Tradition in Korea

Title: The Founding of Catholic Tradition in Korea
Author: Yu Chai-shin
Paperback: 212 pages
Publisher: Asian Humanities Press (January 2002)
ISBN-10: 0895818922
ISBN-13: 978-0895818928 

This book is the red-headed stepchild of prominent texts on Catholicism in Korea. First and foremost, little is published about this book so I was both a bit curious and skeptical at first. I have been pleasantly surprised before by hidden gems but this book was merely a reprint of six essays from the late 1980s sandwiched in between a preface and epilogue by the editor. Yawn.

Each of the essays have a different author save for one repeat author who thankfully happens to be the best of the bunch. Unfortunately for an English speaking audience all content seems to have been originally written in Korean and translated later or written by those whose first language is not English. I'm not criticizing the book solely on this point but there are times when there's a grammatical or spelling error on every single page of the book. It becomes not only distracting but it hurts the overall argument of the book. It's sloppy mistake to an already dry book.

I can't criticize for not trying as there are some interesting pieces to be found but that doesn't excuse the confounded first chapter and that all-too-common uniquely Korean propaganda voice appearing in the last two chapters. A lack of any sort of art or photos makes this already questionable title a less polished presentation. Furthermore, I can't seem to find a definite answer as to when this book was actually originally organized. 1990? 2002? 2004?

Ultimately, I finished the book in a bad mood because it left more questions than it answered. I purchased it because I was curious about Korea's history of Catholicism and while I was able to pick up some very interesting bits from the late 1800s I was shocked to find very little post-Korean war material despite an entire chapter devoted to this very period. The saving graces is the editor's mildly interesting epilogue on indigenization and the third chapter titled "The Chosun Government's Measures Against Catholicism". Other than that, look somewhere else because this isn't what you're looking for.

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It's a shame because I had high hopes for this one. I'm not too bummed because I saw another book along the same lines in waiting. Also, recently I ran across an oldie that seems to be a bit thicker and probably closer to what I was looking for in the first place. Oh well. Better luck next time.

Brief interview with a Korean public school history teacher

A rather off topic post today. Due to my obligations to SMOE (Seoul Ministry of Education) I have to attend certain meetings and seminars. At one of these seminars, an English-speaking Korean high school history teacher delivered a brief lecture on Korean history and why we should care. I think for the most part, my fellow colleagues couldn’t care less about ancient history but are curious about a few modern historical topics. I say this because my colleagues asked questions liked “Why do Koreans hate Japanese?” and “What is all the fuss about Dokdo? Who gives a..” and so on. He was happy to answer.

The lecturer’s name is 임태현 and he was gracious enough to answer a few questions via after the seminar a few months ago. I asked him some rather random questions but he was surprisingly happy to answer them. I have edited out some of the really off-topic questions and modified the speech a little so as to give context. Also, although his English is quite fluent, I have also taken the liberty to correct a few mistakes. I post this with his permission and hope that it answers a few random questions some may have. Enjoy.

Q: How does a person become a public history teacher in Korea? What are the requirements? Is it competitive?

First of all, there are two types of teachers in Korea. Elementary school teachers and Secondary school teachers. Since you are asking about a Korean history teacher, it falls under the category of “Secondary school teachers” because elementary school teachers have to teach all kinds of subjects.

One who wants to be a Korean history teacher must obviously first get a teacher's license. For Koreans, it is needed to enter the College of Education for secondary schools or if he or she majored in history, they can take a teacher's training course or even dual major. Once they obtain the license, they can be a teacher legally. But in Korea, there are more people who are qualified to teach history than are actually needed in the schools. So, the government made a sort of qualifying exam once a year and it is really competitive.

Plus, there are two types of school systems: Public schools and Private schools. The government picks Public school teachers by the qualifying exam, but the private schools invite teachers using their own recruiting system. Their recruitment test may include a test of major knowledge, teaching skills, experiences, etc. What is more important is that recently the government permits some specially selected private schools to invite some competent teachers even if they don’t have a teacher’s license. In this way, even a foreigner could be a Korean history teacher.

Q: How can I learn 한자 (Chinese characters) effectively? Do I need it?

Chinese characters are really difficult to remember and use even for most Koreans because we express most of our feelings in Hangul. But Korean history researchers must be trained to read and interpret Chinese words in historical texts. So once prospective history teachers enter university, they keep reading and memorizing Chinese characters to learn and interpret Chinese sentences. I am not fluent but I am trying improve. I was surprised that you can speak fluent Korean, therefore I think you can easily learn how to read and interpret Chinese characters. I think there might be books on Chinese characters at most bookstores. Considering that you have to interpret Korean to English, just look around and see if there are Hanja-English books available. In the library of my school there are some good Hanja-learning books, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find some.

Q: Could you recommend any Korean historical movies?

I don’t really watch them often, but I can certainly tell you what are some popular ones. Of course the most famous one would have to be “태극기 휘날리며” (Taegugki) which is about 한국전쟁 (Korean War). Two movies set in 조선시대 (Joseon dynasty) are “왕의 남자” (The King and the Clown) and “신기전” (The Divine Weapon). For the 삼국시대 (Korean three kingdoms period) there is “황산벌” (Hwangsanbul). Finally, for the contemporary history, there is “화려한 휴가” (May 18th) which deals with “광주 민주화 운동” (Gwangju Democratic Movement - previously known as the Kwangju Uprising).

Q: Why do public school teachers move to a different every five years? Do they have to go? Why can’t they stay?

Like you ask, it’s only for the public school teachers. Private school teachers stay there until they retire or choose to leave. For the public school teachers, they belong to the government; more specifically, to SOME. The city or local province hires teachers and the city or local province belongs to the government, so teachers have their right to apply for the school they would like to be relocated to. From that point, there exists a sort of preferred school list in terms of traffic, residence, etc. That becomes the reason why the city has to take some measures for teachers to rotate. Otherwise, theoretically, so one would want to teach outside of the downtown area. It’s a system to help make things fair. Nowadays, the 강남 (Gangnam) area is on the top of the wish list.

Wikipedia

UPDATE: Looking to contribute but don't know where to start? WikiProject Korea has a page that spells out what is in need of contribution. For that matter, consider joining WikiProject Korea.

A small call to fellow historians, history-lovers and bloggers: wikipedia needs your help. I don't mean financial help. Well, I'm sure they do but that's not what I mean. What I mean is that wikipedia is a force to be reckoned with in terms of accessibility. The goal of coalescing all the world's combined knowledge is noble and worthy of contribution. We all use wikipedia, right? Usually I feel like there's not much someone like me can do.

Until I start looking at the entries regarding Korean history.

Like all new technologies, the more prominent topics get covered first. The entry for Jesus is quite extensive while the entry on something like 서학 doesn't even exist yet. UPDATE: added it. While it may indicate that Jesus is more important than 서학, it doesn't mean that there aren't people out there without knowledge of 서학 or that it doesn't deserve a post, too.

The altruistic inspiration comes from another blog long since dead but has left an impression on me. It was, after all, what made me think to create the blog you're reading right now. Examples of the 2008 class of Korean History at George Washington University's Wikipedia project can be found here and here.

My charge is this: if you see something that sticks out, take a quick moment to fix it. That's all. I'm not asking scholars to contribute volumes of knowledge; which would be great however in the grand scale, it's not practical. It's all about a small contribution here, a quick fix there, an annotation here and a cite source there.

What is a bit disconcerting is the people who actually contribute original data. I'm all for the spread of knowledge. I take comfort in listening to people who have lived and breathed a subject for decades and who know the ins and outs of their field. These are the ones who should be contributing the most. Yet, when you click on a random Korean history page's edit history and notice that many edits in English are being done by Korean high school students with a functional knowledge of English, you start to doubt the resource's utility. These kids are regurgitating Korean textbooks that are fresh on their mind and devoid of critical analysis; not to mention originating from a relatively single and understandably biased source. This is fine for a collaborative effort but when they become the primary content creators, something is wrong. The table should be balanced. I can't even imagine what's going on on the Korean language version of wikipedia.

Anwways, if you enjoy wikipedia and would like to contribute a little bit to free knowledge, the next time that you are browsing, take a moment to punch up an article or two. Wikipedia's formating language is simple. If you can make a blog or write an email, you can format a wikipedia page. Be constructive, start small, read the tutorials, sit back and feel good that you did something constructive.

Book Review: Times Past in Korea

Title: Times Past in Korea
Author: Martin Uden 
Paperback: 371 pages
Publisher: Routledge (2009)
ISBN-13: 9780415548809

This collection of old clippings, articles, travel journals, personal correspondence and the like compose the rather thick 371 page book Times Past in Korea. What should make anyone pick up this book compiled by the British Ambassador to Korea is largely up to the reader and his or her goal. If it is one's goal to get a frank look into what foreigners were commenting on over a hundred years ago then this book is most certainly for you.

The collection is laid out like an old travelogue. Although the source materials are taken from the 1600s to almost the 1920s, the book is organized by day and month, not by year. For example, the book starts in January 1895 and then jumps to 1904, 1884, 1930 and so on. While the author explains that it is understandably impossible to lay out a perfectly balanced "one entry per day of the day" format, this does become a bit confusing as one paragraph mentions the Japanese colonial minister visiting and the next paragraph is describing a bunch of Dutchmen stranded in the Hermit Kingdom without a regard to any colonial power whatsoever. If you are familiar with your Korean history and are able to mentally switch between periods, it's not a problem. However, for the uninitiated, it's likely enough to drive you crazy.

As clearly stated, the book is not an interpretative study by any means. It's simply a collection of hard-to-find mentions of Korea from the author's extensive personal collection. Knowing this ahead of time, I was pleasantly surprised to find foreigners being just as idiotic a hundred years ago as some are today. To their credit and to balance out some of the more crude statements of ethnic superiority, there are a surprisingly large amount of modern parallels still valid today. It's almost shocking to find so many things have not changed, at least on the surface.

All in all, this book is a great addition to any Korean history book collection, if that's what you're doing - collecting. It's a bit pricey and even harder to find outside of Korea. The original publishing date is back in 2003 which might account for how hard it is to find, but even when found, roughly fifty American dollars is a lot to throw down for a glorified snapshot largely devoid of photographs and character. However, I must be honest and say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading what missionaries, diplomats, adventurous vacationers and other passerbys had to say about Korea a hundred years.

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This month, I had the privilege to attend an open lecture hosted by the Royal Asiatic Society and led by Martin Uden about his book. The ambassador was gracious enough to entertain a few questions including mine about the curious layout of the book. He talked a bit about the book and showed some of the more interesting and photographically appealing excerpts. A stand up guy all around.

Book Review: Korea through Western Eyes

Title: Korea through Western Eyes
Author: Robert D. Neff, Sunghwa Cheong 
Paperback: 434 pages
Publisher: Seoul National University Press (2009)
ISBN-13: 9788952110039

This polished collection of over thirty short stories about Korea around the late 1800s and early 1900s is a treasure. In a field where academics rule and accessibility is limited to skewed ancient historical journals, Korean War veteran memoirs and horror stories from North Korea, this book is a much needed breath of fresh air about foreigners in Korea.

Neff takes a very honest approach to his book. His research skills are quite evident as he cites scores of newspaper articles, personal correspondence and travel journals. When he makes a claim, it's backed up and sometimes even runs counter to what has been previously published. Although I'm sure the author is not actively looking to debunk popular myths, the book does come off as brutally honest though decidedly neutral in terms of historical interpretation. Inadvertently, some myths get debunked in the process.

If you are looking for some juicy history that has nothing to do with Korea's distinct four seasons, kimchi or dokdo than you've found your book. It's filled with many firsts introduced to Korea such as electricity, streetcars, foreign-owned gold mines and western military advisors; not to mention some of the most scandalous foreigners Korea has ever seen. Historians and casual readers alike will appreciate the readability of this one-of-a-kind text.

As I try to be critical of all books by presenting both positive and negative points, I must say that the only thing I would have preferred is more Korean language when mentioned in the script. As an avid discriminator to English romanization, I would have preferred if romanized words are used that the corresponding Korean words in parenthesis would also be used. As this doesn't come up often, it's not a huge gripe and small potatoes considering that it is the only complaint I have. Furthermore, it's quite a personal one that may not be shared by all.

Finally, I must also note that the photos included are quite impressive and very relevant to stories told. The overall design of the book is practically flawless. It's just an overall impressive presentation full of humor, sadness, debauchery and curiously relevant parallels to modern times. Don't let this one pass you by.

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Full disclosure: I'm a huge fan of Robert Neff and his works. I eat up his writings wherever they may be published. I think he is one of the most talented researchers out there and although he writes for such a niche market, one would be hard-pressed to rival his works.

Anyways, this was a book that I was anxiously awaiting and it did not disappoint. I burned through it within a week and look forward to his next efforts. I'm a Neffie.

Also, here's a short review from the Korea Times although I'm not sure that she actually read it. Does anyone else get that feeling from her writeup?

NOTE: This book finally laid to rest my morbid curiosity of George Lake; a poor excuse of a human being that Neff first wrote about back in 2008. His story is enough to buy the book.

Book Review: Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945

Title: Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
Author: Hildi Kang
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Cornell University Press (October 20, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0801472709
ISBN-13: 978-0801472701

This is exactly what you want this type of book to be. Surprising, eye-opening, reliable, well-edited and jaw-dropping. If you are the least bit curious as to why your Korean grandmother hates all things Japanese, pick this book up. If you are in the pursuit of scholarly research and you need some oral history recollections, these are gold. The author has done extremely well in translating, arranging, presenting and setting historical context for each chapter.

Some stories are just a paragraph long while others go one for pages. Despite the sample being taken from elderly Koreans living in the American west coast, the people interviewed are amazing diverse and well-represented. The stories are captivating, earnest and beautifully told. I can't imagine how the stories must have sounded in the original language because the English translation is simply breathtaking.

The reader may find it unusual to hear that many Koreans became civilized or even friends with Japanese living in their towns during this period. The honesty of the interviewees runs counter to the widespread belief that all Japanese were zealous conquerors bent on world domination. Don't misunderstand, some of the stories indeed paint a terrible picture in terms of cultural repression, but as mentioned before, the book is well-balanced.

My only disappointment was the short length of the book. That's it. It's readable by anyone with a passing interest in Japanese colonial history. It's what you want - a collection of stories that completes any academic background you might have read.

Simply a gem.

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This is one of those books that makes you pat yourself on the back for buying. The preface bares the books possible shortcomings and prepares the reader for a honest look at some of the most difficult times experienced by Koreans in modern times.

Another reviewer might give you a better idea of what to expect.