Lee Myung Bak: Korea’s CEO President Seoul Selection, 2008 When their country has pulled itself up from the devastation of war in the space of fifty years, and a man has risen from poverty to the highest office in the same period, Koreans have every right to feel proud of themselves and their country. That … [Read More]
Category: Non-fiction (page 11)
New books for the Spring
Three recent publications: First, a new book in the Korean Spirit and Culture series, produced by the aptly named Korean Spirit and Culture Promotion Project. This is their fourth, and is the first of two to explore Fifty Wonders of Korea. This volume covers Culture and Art, while the next one will cover Science and … [Read More]
Words of inspiration
NO RIVER TO CROSS: Trusting the Enlightenment that’s Always Right There Zen Master Daehaeng Wisdom Publications, Boston US$14.95 The title refers to the idea that you don’t have to make a grand pilgrimage to find your Buddha nature, as it’s already inside you, and this approachable book offers plenty of inspiring thoughts. It starts with … [Read More]
Pyongyang – the view from Europe
Glyn Ford (with Kwon Soyoung): North Korea on the Brink (Pluto Press, 2008) Books on North Korea tend to blur in to one another. There are seemingly countless volumes either describing life under the Kims or analysing the history of diplomatic and undiplomatic engagement between the DPRK and the rest of the world, particularly the … [Read More]
Inheriting the gifts of grief: Brenda Paik Sunoo’s moving memoir
Brenda Paik Sunoo: Seaweed and Shamans – Inheriting the gifts of grief Seoul Selection, April 2006 I remember logging this book in my memory sometime in early 2006, having read some advance notice of in, I think, the Seoul Selection weekly email. I didn’t read the small print too closely, and confess I didn’t read … [Read More]
Book review: Brother One Cell
Cullen Thomas: Brother One Cell — Coming of Age in South Korea’s Prisons Pan Books, 2007 A “powerful, harrowing and moving memoir”, proclaims the blurb on the back. “A Korean tear in the muscle round the ribs, a Korean hernia…” reads the selective quote. The cover design, a Getty image of hands grasping prison bars, … [Read More]
Richard Stubbs: Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2005) Stubbs’s thesis is simple: that one of the key drivers of Asia’s economic growth has been not free market economics, not Confucian values, not the developmental state, not Japanese or American hegemony, but war, both hot and cold. Stubbs takes seven countries – South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Young-jin on Lee Chang-dong
(Seoul Selection, 2007) I can imagine that there was a certain amount of discussion about the timing of this book. After a break of some years — enforced by his stint as Roh Moo-hyun’s first Minister for Culture and Tourism — the well-regarded director Lee Chang-dong was active again. His new film, with two of … [Read More]
Upcoming books on Korean film
Just as the Korean film scene seems to be losing some of its buzz, books about it are coming thick and fast. 2004 saw the Wallflower Press book (though it seems only last year that it came out); 2005 saw the Julian Stringer / Shin Chi-yun book; and last year came the book on Kim … [Read More]
Book review: J Scott Burgeson — Korea Bug
J Scott Burgeson: Korea Bug Eunhaeng Namu, Seoul, 2005 A recent article in the JoongAng daily about a foreigner in Seoul who hasn’t made himself popular with hypersensitive and volatile Korean netizens introduced me to a gem. Burgeson, a foreigner who has been in Seoul since 1996 is one of the more unusual expats out … [Read More]
Book review: Ha-Joon Chang — Bad Samaritans
Random House, 2007 Read a typical book which espouses liberal free-trade globalisation and a typical reaction is “Yes, but…” Books such as “Lexus and the Olive Tree” are well written, and carry you along in the sweep of the argument. But you have a niggling sense of unease that something must be wrong with what’s … [Read More]
Tom Coyner and Song-Hyon Jang: Mastering Business in Korea
(Seoul Selection, 2007) With a title like “Mastering Business in Korea” the current book might well turn off the casual reader. But as well as having, as its title suggests, a business angle, it can also be used as a more general cultural guide. And because this is a practical book written by people who … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Hong-joon: Kim Ki-young
Kim Ki-young, Ed Kim Hong-joon KOFIC Korean Film Directors Series Seoul Selection, 2007 KOFIC’s enterprise in bringing out this series is greatly to be welcomed. This current instalment is particularly welcome as English-language materials on Kim Ki-young are few and far between. (Chris Berry’s web project, House of Kim Ki-young, seems to be out of … [Read More]
Chung Sung-ill: Im Kwon-taek
(Seoul Selection, 2007) Together with its sister publication, the work on Kim Ki-young, this book is the fourth and fifth in KOFIC’s series of monographs on individual Korean directors. It’s also the first time that KOFIC has charged for them. The first three were available for free download from the KOFIC website: these are only … [Read More]
Kim Hunggyu: Understanding Korean Literature
ME Sharpe, 1997 Written in 1986 and expertly translated by Robert Fouser ten years later, this is a highly readable basic introduction to the wide variety of Korean literary forms. The scope of the work includes oral literature, literature written in Korean but using Chinese characters, and, perhaps controversially, literature written in classical Chinese, as … [Read More]
Book review: James Church — A Corpse in the Koryo
James Church: A Corpse in the Koryo Thomas Dunne Books, 2006 Inspector O is a maverick. No respecter of authority, he answers back to his boss, he drives the departmental car without permission, and even, horror of horrors, refuses to wear his Kim Il-sung badge. Not another cliché cop, you might groan. Well, he doesn’t … [Read More]