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One of the first, most widely-read and respected histories of Korea, Ki-baik Lee's Han'guksa Sillon has been translated into English by Edward W. Wagner. A New History of Korea offers Western readers a distillation of the best scholarship on Korean history and culture from the earliest times to the student revolution of 1960.
This is the most reliable and popular history of Korea available in English. The tumultuous developments of the modern era receive the greatest coverage, but the book's balanced treatment of traditional Korea emphasizes cultural events as integrally related to the political, social, and economic evolution of this ancient nation.
Honorable Mention, Book Award in History of the Association for Asian American Studies. In this book, Richard S. Kim examines the central role played by immigrants in the independence movement that sought to liberate Korea from Japanese colonization. Regarding Japanese rule as illegitimate, Koreans in and out of the Korean peninsula viewed themselves as a stateless people. Their independence activities had to be carried out from abroad, creating conditions for the emergence of a diasporic nationalism. Using English and Korean language sources, Kim traces how Koreans in the United States articulated visions of national sovereignty, drawing particularly on American political rhetoric and symbo...
A collection of articles dealing with the introduction of Buddhism in Korea and its subsequent spread from there to Japan. The studies contained in this volume cover the Three Kingdom period.
The Will to Win focuses on the substantial role of US military advisors to the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) from 1946 until 1953 in one of America’s early attempts at nation building. Gibby describes ROKA’s structure, mission, challenges, and successes, thereby linking the South Korean army and their US advisors to the traditional narrative of this “forgotten war.” The work also demonstrates the difficulties inherent in national reconstruction, focusing on barriers in culture and society, and the effects of rapid decolonization combined with intense nationalism and the appeal of communism to East Asia following the destruction of the Japanese empire. Key conclusions include the impo...
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This work provides an introduction to some of the most important and representative genres of classical Korean literature. Coverage includes: Samguk sagi and samguk yusa as literature; Kunmong and Unyongchon; the lyricism of Koryo songs; and the literature of Chosen Dynasty Women.
Offering an alternative discourse on modernization and development viewed specifically from the East Asia perspective, this book focuses its analysis on the Korean experience of modernization and development. It considers the broad range of societal transformations which have occurred over the past half century, utilizing the vernacular language of Korea extracted from everyday life to interpret, characterize, globalize and pedagogically broaden the understanding and the human meaning behind these complex social changes.
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This controversial new study, breaks with the tradition of basing political studies on analyses of institutions and political personalities, by likening the Republic of Korea to a laboratory for the clash of political cultures. In the late 1940s, the Americans embarked upon a democratization programme designed to create a Western bulwark against the spread of communism in East Asia. The intervening years have seen the advent and demise of military rule, with South Korea now having a democratically-elected government. Although the US strategy thus seems successful, the political crises of 1995 in fact indicate that many obstacles remain here to the adoption of Western-style democracy. This study argues that socialization in general and political socialization in particular are key factors in any analysis of democracy, be it in Korea or elsewhere. Accordingly, the work draws on moral education textbooks, together with surveys and interviews among members of the urban intellectual elite. In this manner, the psychological roots of power and authority - key concepts to an understanding of 'good government' - are explored.