From the publisher’s website: This important book examines the history, process and significance of official portrait making during Korea’s Joseon dynasty (1392-1910)—the country’s last and longest-ruling Confucian dynasty. By highlighting significant pieces in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco’s collection, including draft portraits of Bunmu meritorious officials and the portrait of Song Siyeol (1607-1689), … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 61)
The Art of Korea: Highlights from the Collection of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum
From the publisher’s website: This stunning art book explores the rich visual history of Korean peninsula with dozens of Korean paintings, sculptures, figurines, porcelain, and textiles. Korea is home to one of the longest and most vibrant art traditions in the world—yet it is one of the least known in the United States. San Francisco’s … [Read More]
Democracy After Democratization: The Korean Experience
From the publisher’s website: Half a century since the adoption of democracy in South Korea, the Korean people’s high hopes for popular governance have not been met. There is widespread skepticism about what Korea’s implementation of democracy has brought to the nation and whether it will be able to respond effectively in the future to … [Read More]
Peacemaker: Twenty Years of Inter-Korean Relations and the North Korean Nuclear Issue
From the publisher’s website: More than two decades after the cold war ended elsewhere, it continues undiminished on the Korean Peninsula. The division of the Korean nation into competing North and South Korean states and the destructive war that followed constitute one of the great, and still unresolved, tragedies of the twentieth century. Peacemaker is the memoir … [Read More]
Peace on a Knife’s Edge: The Inside Story of Roh Moo-hyun’s North Korea Policy
From the publisher’s website: Lee Jong-Seok served as vice-secretary of South Korea’s National Security Council and as its unification minister under the Roh Moo-Hyun administration (2003–08). After Roh’s tragic death in 2009, Lee resolved to present a record of the so-called participatory government’s achievements and failures in the realm of unification, foreign affairs, and national … [Read More]
South Korean Identity and Global Foreign Policy: Dream of Autonomy
From the publisher’s website: In the 20th century, South Korea was usually seen as a “shrimp amongst whales”, a minor player with limited agency in regional and global affairs. Korea’s risen status as a “middle power” today, however, begs the question about related changes in the South Korean identity or “sense of self” in the … [Read More]
Balancing Communities: Nation, State, and Protestant Christianity in Korea, 1884–1942
From the publisher’s website: Starting in 1884 with the arrival of the first resident Protestant missionary in Korea and ending with the expulsion of missionaries from the peninsula by the Japanese colonial government in 1942, Balancing Communities examines how the competing demands of communal identities and memberships shaped the early history of Protestantism in Korea. In so … [Read More]
Eating Korean in America: Gastronomic Ethnography of Authenticity
From the publisher’s website: Can food be both national and global at the same time? What happens when a food with a national identity travels beyond the boundaries of a nation? What makes a food authentically national and yet American or broader global? With these questions in mind, Sonia Ryang explores the world of Korean … [Read More]
Eating Korea: Reports on a Culinary Renaissance
From the publisher’s website: An energetic, fast-paced trip through the rapidly changing world of Korean cuisine by the author of Eating Viet Nam Journalist, world traveler, and avid eater Graham Holliday has sampled some of the most exotic and intriguing cuisines in countries around the globe. However, none has intrigued him more or stayed with … [Read More]
First Kyu
From the details at Amazon: How far would you go to be first? “BEFORE WE BEGIN… Let me tell you a story. An old story, a really old story. Do you know how to play Go? You do? First kyu, a player of the first rank? Really? Have you ever competed in a professional qualifying … [Read More]
In the Service of His Korean Majesty: William Nelson Lovatt, the Pusan Customs, and Sino-Korean Relations, 1876–1888
From the publisher’s website: In this book, Wayne Patterson examines the recently found correspondence, journals, and photographs of William Nelson Lovatt, Korea’s first commissioner of customs in Pusan. These materials significantly advance our knowledge of a critical time in the late Chosŏn period. The study’s main theme is the transformation of China’s policy toward Korea … [Read More]
Trial and Error in Modernist Reforms: Korean Buddhism under Colonial Rule
From the publisher’s website: This book examines the Korean Buddhist reform movement and how the modern construct of Buddhism developed under colonial rule. Park argues that Korean Buddhists reconstructed Buddhism as socially active and nationally viable by responding to, negotiating with, and resisting the influence of Western modernity and the Japanese colonial government. The need … [Read More]
Min Yŏnghwan: The Selected Writings of a Late Chosŏn Diplomat
From the publisher’s website: This book contains selected writings of Min Yŏnghwan, a statesman and reformist of late-Chosŏn Korea. Min’s detailed descriptions of his journeys to Russia to attend Czar Nicholas II’s coronation and London for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee produce vivid images of the world at that time while also revealing Min’s perceptions from … [Read More]
Diseased Dirigisme: The Political Sources of Financial Policy toward Small Business in Korea
From the publisher’s website: The financial and economic collapse of 1997 provoked serious reflection on South Korea’s development experience. This book offers a critique of how conventional analyses have interpreted Korean development by focusing on the problems of Korean dirigisme (state-led development) that led to the crisis. Korea’s dirigisme carried with it a flawed authoritarian … [Read More]
Modern Korean Society: Its Development and Prospect
From the publisher’s website: This volume serves as a comprehensive survey textbook on modern Korean society for use by students and teachers alike. The chapters provide discussion on key issues of modern Korean studies, including regionalism, inequality, and division. The common theme is the influence of Korea’s unique traditional elements on the modernization process and … [Read More]
Stories inside Stories: Music in the Making of the Korean Olympic Ceremonies
This volume is about the music in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Seoul Olympics (1988) that were watched on television by millions of people. More specifically, the book is about the planning and decisions that resulted in a remarkable presentation, a narrative enacted in mythic terms from Korean cosmology, archetypes from world religions, … [Read More]