Publisher’s description: The first Western account of Korea is the story of a group of sailors shipwrecked on Cheju-do. Some thirteen years later, after escaping to Japan, Hamel gave the outside world a firsthand description of Korea, an almost unknown country until then. Dr. Jean-Paul, who is Dutch, has made the first translation based on … [Read More]
Booklist: Translated non-fiction (page 9)
The Four-Seven Debate: An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought
From the publisher’s website: This book is an annotated translation, with introduction and commentary, of the correspondence between Yi Hwang (T’oegye, 1500-1570) and Ki Taesung (Kobong, 1527-1572) and between Yi I (Yulgok, 1536-1584) and Song Hon (Ugye, 1535-1598), known as the Four-Seven Debate, the most famous philosophical controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian thought. The most complex … [Read More]
Sourcebook of Korean Civilization: Volume 1: From Early Times to the Sixteenth Century
This book is the most comprehensive and authoritative English-language anthology of primary source material on Korean civilization ever assembled. It begins with the Korean creation myth, covering the rise of Korea’s Three Kingdoms, then the history of the Kory dynasty and its lasting influences on Korean culture, and, finally the Early Choson period, with important … [Read More]
Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul’s Korean Way of Zen
From the publisher’s website: Chinul (1158–1210) was the founder of the Korean tradition of Zen. He provides one of the most lucid and accessible accounts of Zen practice and meditation to be found anywhere in East Asian literature. Tracing Back the Radiance, an abridgment of Buswell’s Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul, combines an extensive introduction … [Read More]
To Become a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning
From the publisher’s website: Yi Hwang (1501-1570), better known by his pen name T’oegye, is generally considered Korea’s preeminent Neo-Confucian scholar. The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning is his final masterpiece, a distillation of the learning and practice of a lifetime, and one of the most important works of Korean Neo-Confucianism. In it he crystallized the essence … [Read More]
Shamanism: The Spirit World of Korea
From the publisher’s website: A series of psychological and anthropological studies about the oldest and the most fascinating religious tradition of Korea. Contents Acknowledgments – R. Guisso Preface – CS. Yu and R. Guisso Korean Shamanism – A Bibliographical Introduction – Kim In-hoe Tr. Yoo Young-sik An Introduction to Korean Shamanism – Chang Chu-kun Tr. … [Read More]
Hye Ch’o Diary: A Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India
From the publisher’s website: The first English translation of the travel diary of a Korean Buddhist monk who traveled from his homeland to India in the eighth century. While the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims have been much studied, Hye Cho’s pilgrimage has not been given the consideration it deserves. His description of the Silk Road communities, … [Read More]
A New History of Korea
The first English-language history of Korea to appear in more than a decade, this translation offers Western readers a distillation of the latest and best scholarship on Korean history and culture from the earliest times to the student revolution of 1960. The most widely read and respected general history, A New History of Korea (Han’guksa … [Read More]
The Korean approach to Zen: the collected works of Chinul
LKL says: this title, one of the Unesco collection of representative Korean works, is out of print. You can find it it major university libraries. The 468-page volume contains all of Chinul’s works, translated with an introduction by Robert E Buswell Jr. The reviewer on Goodreads found it hard going but important. The volume was … [Read More]
Nanjung Ilgi: war diary of admiral Yi Sun-sin
The text of Korea’s 76th national treasure, listed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World registry. Second-hand copies are occasionally available, for a price (eg, at the time of writing Amazon has a copy available at over £1,000); and you can find it in specialist libraries. LTI Korea advertise the title as being available to purchase … [Read More]
Samguk Yusa: Legends and History of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea
A fascinating work, dating from the late 1200s. This book (Yusa), is not just a story but a collection of histories, anecdotes and memorabilia, covering the origins of Korea’s three monarchies: Silla, Paekche and Koguryo, offering an account of the latter nation that differs quite a bit from what you’ll read in Chinese history books. … [Read More]