Since someone over at Marmot’s Hole, apparently co-opting another user’s name (…by the way….does anybody know what happened to Kushibo in the K-blogsphere???), told me in a pissy way I needed to spend some time reading up on Korea — I think he/she recommended The Idiot’s Guide to Korea — and since I’ve been thinking what I could post here — I decided to do a brief review of this book: A New History of Korea by Lee Ki Baik
If you have a serious interest in Korean history before the Korean War, this is a good book to start with — or read for background on other periods you might not be familiar with if you’ve already been reading more specialized books — or if you need a quick source to backup something you are saying in the K-blogsphere — or to use as a quick memory refresher through its extensive index.
It will not interest a very casual reader, however, because it is a dry, academic book used as a textbook for introductory Korean history survey courses at university in Korea. (It was translated into English and used for the same purpose in Korean Studies in the U.S.)
If your interest in Korea is above the most casual, however, it is well worth reading. It gives an excellent background on Korean history from the prehistoric age to 1960.
If you have read some books on Korean history from the Japanese colonial period up to today — one thing that is most refreshing about Lee Ki Baik’s book is — it isn’t political. If he had an ax to grind, I couldn’t see it. (very, very refreshing - even if dry)
What he does do is —- break down different eras of Korean history into all the constituent parts that make up a society:
He divides a historical period into sections along political, social, religious, and cultural lines. He covers everything: from top level politics in the different dynasties, to geopolitical issues, to economics, to cultural development in the arts, religion, and philosophy. He talks about Koreans from the king down to the peasants and social outcasts.
Again, it is dry, academic reading, but the history itself has enough highlights to keep the interest of most people who like to read….
For anybody with a real interest in Korea’s long history, it is definitely a good buy.
(The only disappointing thing about the book for me was that it did not go past 1960 and the early stage of the rise of Park Chung Hee.
I found that highly interesting and somewhat frustrating, because the author had brought to the pages a no-nonsense, seemingly unbiased view of Korean history, including the colonial era, that made me want to see how he would handle the modern period of Korean history.)
Popularity: 3%
11:54 am on July 17th, 2008 1
Dry academic reading it is. I gave away my copy. History books need not be boring. One of my favorites on Korea is the Confucian Transformation of Korea by Martina Deutschler. She made the era come to life with people, events, and issues. I was astonished at how forcefully Confucianism was imposed on Koreans with the simultaneous suppression of Buddhism, and how women lost so many rights.
I think it is difficult to pull off a good general history book that communicates broad themes rather than cramming facts. Books that focus on a particular, person, event, or era seem to be far more readable as the content flows.
1:18 pm on July 17th, 2008 2
This was the text we used in Korean History class in college. It is dry, and the names are hard to keep up with, but I still re-read it at times.
3:26 pm on July 17th, 2008 3
[DELETED FOR PERSONAL ATTACK] Note that anymore personal attacks will lead you to being banned. You can disagree with someone but you don’t need to launch personal attacks against them.
5:29 pm on July 17th, 2008 4
I haven’t read this history book but a pretty good general Korean history book I have on my shelf is Andrew Nahm’s, Introduction to Korean History and Culture. I wouldn’t say the book is politicized and is fairly up to date with the most recent printing in 2004.
It also goes through the Park Chung-hee era and into the 90’s as well unlike Lee’s book. Anyone read both books and have an opinion on which one is better?
9:17 pm on July 17th, 2008 5
I read the book while working on an undergrad thesis. I agree with Zenkimchi, it’s good for facts and whatnot. The thesis I did focused especially on Korea’s pre and early history, and this is particularly where Lee’s book catches a lot of flack. Hyung Il Pai’s “Constructing Korean Origins” is worth a read.
12:57 am on July 18th, 2008 6
I still keep this book handy for any time I need a quick refresher on events during some period of Korean history - especially pre-colonial.
I became less concerned with how dry the book is the more I read books about Korean history.
There are such an abundance of books about the colonial and US-involvement period (modern Korea) — and so many of them are busy being politics to the table - which isn’t bad — if they are setting out to prove a point or prove the value of looking at a period of history in this or that light —
—- but I got dog-tired of them.
Lee’s book began more refreshing the more I read….
I liked Deutschler but one I prefer more than it is one I plan to review in the next couple of weeks and one that might be of interest to people who are not or were not Korean Studies people. It is a book that looks at the early to middle period of the Chosun Dynasty and gives a close look at how socio-politics operated. The parts about the students at the national confucian academy protesting in the streets reminded me of today..
3:06 am on July 18th, 2008 7
I must be a sick puppy because I didn’t find the book dry at all. Then again, all I read during my free time is histories, and I generally prefer academic histories over narrative or popular histories unless I am trying to supplement a more scholarly book. I forget exactly why Lee stopped where he did (I don’t have access to it as I sit in my hotel room), but I think it had something to do with when he published the book.
Fortunately, there is an option available. Carter Eckert and a couple of other Harvard professors took Lee’s “A New History of Korea” and updated it, adding in information up to 1990, and put it out under the title, “Korea Old and New” (http://www.amazon.com/Korea-Old-New-History-Institute/dp/0962771309/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216313916&sr=8-1).