Date: Wednesday, 2 May 2007 Time: 17.00-19.00 Title: Koryo Saram – The Unreliable People (one hour documentary film)* Director: Y. David Chung Director of Photography and Editor: Matt Dibble Executive Producer: Meredith Woo Historical Consultant: German Kim (Kazakh State University) Venue: Khalili Lecture Theatre, Main Building, SOAS *The screening will be followed by a Q&A … [Read More]
Category: History (page 26)
James Salter: The Hunters
Penguin 2007 (originally published 1956) A ripping yarn set among the US fighter pilots in the Korean war. Apart from the passing references to Korean houseboys, and the fact that the dogfights take place over the river Yalu, there’s nothing to distinguish this novel plot-wise from your average Commando war mag. There’s the experienced and … [Read More]
The Irish Contribution to Joseon Korea
Another post in honour of St Patrick: OhMyNews has a piece on the Irish contribution to Korea’s early modern history Arguably the first Irishman to live in Korea arrived in Seoul in the mid 1890s. His name was John McLeavy Brown, and he was a lawyer by trade, but was employed with the Imperial Chinese … [Read More]
Restoring Seoul’s faded past
Visit OhMyNews for an interesting article from Robert Neff. Great pictures too. Here’s a list of all of Neff’s articles. Well worth a browse for those interested in Korea’s early modern history. [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]
Kajiyama Toshiyuki: The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea
The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea: The Clan Records | Seeking Life Amidst Death: The Last Day of the War | When the Hibiscus Blooms | The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty | A Crane on a Dunghill: Seoul in 1936 Kajiyama Toshiyuki, translated by Yoshiko Dykstra (University of Hawaii Press, 1995) … [Read More]
Death of the worlds oldest company
A Japanese company which, according to the Chosun Ilbo, has its roots in Korea, is to go into liquidation in January 2007. The company, temple builder Kongo Gumi, was founded in 578. Links: Family Business list of the world’s oldest companies Time Magazine article (Feb 2004) Kongo Gumi website [Read More]
Beer-bottle VC honoured
The Korean War featured briefly in the first episode of a Channel 5 series, presented by Prince Charles, on Sunday. The series is about holders of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for military bravery. The first Victoria Cross awarded by our current monarch was to Bill Speakman (left) of the Black Watch, attached to … [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]
The passing of a Korean war veteran
From a recent obituary in the Telegraph: Vice-admiral Sir Charles Mills, who has died (on July 27) aged 91, was a talented staff officer whose one chance of independent command came in the destroyer Concord during the Korean War. In the course of six patrols over 95,000 miles with Dutch and New Zealand ships of … [Read More]
Some good pictures
Firstly, some photos from 1970s Seoul. Commentary on Antti Leppänen’s site here and here. Antti’s site has a number of good posts with photos. All his photography posts can be found collected together on this del.icio.us page. Enjoy at your leisure. Also, some images from the Korean war, courtesy of the Chosun. And finally, something … [Read More]
Afghanistan worst fighting “since the Korean War”
It’s taken the interview over a week to make it from the BBC World Service onto BBC TV primetime (News at Ten) but on Friday evening the Beeb had a feature on the British military presence in Afghanistan. The interview was with Lt Gen David Richards (left). He is commanding the Nato force in the … [Read More]
Alternative takes on Independence Day
The Chosun Ilbo provides some interesting alternative takes on Independence Day. It’s not just the day that Koizumi visited the Yasukuni shrine again, or when Koreans held anti-American demonstrations. First, the event was marked in Japan, as it has for the past 16 years, by a “Concert for Peace” given by the Tokyo Phil, this … [Read More]
Free books on the internet
I recently joined the Korea Studies mailing list at koreaweb.ws. Amid the emails on upcoming academic conferences and professorial vacancies there’s frequently an interesting nugget or two for an amateur like me. Recently there have been some communications about classic out-of-copyright books being available for free over the internet. In fact one academic, Thomas Duvernay, … [Read More]
Condoms as a lucky charm
The FT’s Seoul correspondent, Anna Fifield, had a busy week last week. Head office would have been wanting her to divine what is going on in the brains of the DPRK’s leadership – not an easy task, and everyone’s got something to say on the subject. Fifield’s piece in Saturday’s FT was one of the … [Read More]