David Halberstam The Coldest Winter – America and the Korean War 718pp, Hyperion, 2007 The subtitle of David Halberstam’s magnum opus, The Coldest Winter – America and the Korean War, at first seems a bit unimaginative. But it is to the point. After all, without Truman’s decision to commit US ground forces, the whole Korean … [Read More]
Category: History Books (page 3)
Book Review: Reginald Thompson — Cry Korea
As British war veterans gather in Korea to mark the anniversary of the battle of the Imjin River, Jennifer Barclay reviews a recently republished eye-witness account of the early months of the war. Cry Korea is the most unusual book I’ve read about the Korean War. While interviewing British veterans of that war, I’m often … [Read More]
Korea Yearbook 2008
Korea Yearbook 2008 Eds Rüdiger Frank, James E Hoare, Patrick Köllner, Susan Pares Brill, 2009 The 2008 Korea Yearbook – Politics, Economy and Society does many of the things that a reader might expect: it contains a collection of papers which review the key developments in its chosen subject areas for the past year. At … [Read More]
Donald Kirk on the late 90s financial crisis
Donald Kirk: Korean Crisis: Unraveling of the Miracle in the IMF Era Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (1999) The strength of this book is that is brings together in one place the reportage of one of the key foreign journalists based in Seoul during the 1990s. With access to politicians, press releases and Korean and foreign businessmen, … [Read More]
Book review: The Dawn of Modern Korea
Andrei Lankov – The Dawn of Modern Korea EunHaeng NaMu publishing, 2008 This entertaining book has, paradoxically, taken me a devil of a long time to finish. That’s not because it’s difficult. It’s because it’s the opposite. The book is co-branded with a series of articles that Andrei Lankov has been writing for the Korea … [Read More]
Book review: A (minjung) History of Korea
Korea Historical Research Association (tr Joshua van Lieu) A History of Korea Saffron Books, 2005 It’s the 1980s. In Britain, leftist ideologues such as Red Robbo, Arthur Scargill and Derek Hatton had for years been railing against the government and the establishment using turgid language pilloried in satirical magazines, TV programmes and film1. Anyone who … [Read More]
West, Philip and Suh, Ji-moon: Remembering the “forgotten war”
The Korean War through Literature and Art (M.E. Sharpe, 2001) An interesting and approachable collection of papers addressing how the Korean war is represented in the arts of the different countries involved. Chapters address Korean film, visual arts, and poetry, and also how the war impacted the lives and work of six Korean novelists. For … [Read More]
Carter Ekert and others: Korea Old and New
Carter J Eckert / Ki-baik Lee / Young Ick Lew / Michael Robinson / Edward W Wagner (Ilchokak Publishers, for Korea Institute, Harvard University, 1990) An ambitious book which aims in the space of 400 pages to encapsulate Korea’s history from Palaeolithic times up until 1990. In a book of this nature it is inevitable … [Read More]
Books on Korean Heroes
Probably a fairly straightforward question from a visitor in the US: I have children born in U.S. For education purposes, I am trying to find good (series of) books written in English for Korean Heroes in old history. Could someone refer me to website links? Thanks. My immediate thought is to recommend the series recently … [Read More]
Sea-Jin Chang: Financial Crisis and Transformation of Korean Business Groups
The Rise and Fall of Chaebols (Cambridge, 2003) A welcome and very detailed examination of the history and structure of the Korean business conglomerates. The strengths of this book are manifold. First and foremost is the wealth of evidence sourced from the Korea Information Service which provides some raw data for some hard conclusions. And … [Read More]
Susie Younger: Never ending flower
Susie Younger: Never ending flower Collins Harvill, 1967 To describe this book as a memoir of a Catholic missionary in South Korea in the early 1960s, while factually correct, undersells it. Yes, the author is a person of deep Christian faith, but her work in Korea is more that of a social worker than evangelist. … [Read More]
Donald Kirk & Choe Sang-hun (eds): Korea Witness
Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm (EunHaengNaMu, Seoul, 2006) A tribute to the many foreign correspondents who have worked in Seoul, this book celebrates 50 years of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club. The book starts with one of the first mentions of Korea in the … [Read More]
Chae-jin Lee: A Troubled Peace
Chae-jin Lee: A Troubled Peace — US Policy and the Two Koreas Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2006 A very thorough review of the history of the relations between the US and (the two) Korea(s) over the past hundred or so years. To me, there’s rather too many trees and not enough wood, but I guess … [Read More]
Mark Clifford: Troubled Tiger
(M.E. Sharpe / Routledge 1998) Chronicles the modern history of Korea from the 1960s to the mid-90s, focusing on the drive for economic growth and the control exerted by the Blue House over the direction of the economy. Clifford gives us a politically balanced view, emphasising the successes of Park Chung-hee, but not shrinking from … [Read More]
Book Review: Admiral Yi Sun-sin
Admiral Yi Sun-sin: A brief overview of his life and achievements Korean Spirit and Culture Promotion Project, 2006 A quick and easy read setting out the achievements of Admiral Yi in the Imjin war against Japan. As well as telling Yi’s story (sometimes using Yi’s own war diary and memorials to the throne), the book … [Read More]
Andrew Holloway: A Year in Pyongyang
(Aidan FC’s website, 1988) Amid the pile of available reading material on the DPRK, is there room for an unpublished memoir, getting on for 20 years old, recording the experiences of a lowly “raiser” — someone who converts Konglish into English — in late 1980s Pyongyang? Definitely yes. Though obviously not state of the art, … [Read More]