Korean history talks: January-February 08
Some very interesting Korean history talks coming up in the next few months. Obviously to attend them all one would need the sort of jetsetting lifestyle that i...
Author: Owen
The 30-second tour of historical Pukchon
When I was in Korea last month I stayed at a lovely place in the area of Seoul known as Pukchon or ‘North Village’ that lies between the two big pal...
Why octopuses are good at archaeology and Yonsama is the son of God
A brief news round-up. I meant to blog on the story of the octopus that ‘discovered’ a treasure trove of twelfth century pottery off the coast of Ko...
History ‘faction’
According to the Hankyoreh, historical novels are all the rage at the moment in Korea. This doesn’t really surprise me all that much as historical novels ...
The June struggle in the British newspapers
Over at my own blog I’ve decided to mark the anniversary of the events of June 1987 in South Korea by following contemporary reports from the British news...
… and then they came for Taekwondo
Another sign of Korea’s increasing sense of insecurity in the face of rapidly growing Chinese economic and political power, or another sign of China’...
Two talks this week
A couple of very interesting talks coming up at short notice for anyone who happens to be around in LA or Seoul in the next couple of days (or perhaps both if y...
Sea Devils (revisited)
Professor Gari Ledyard of Columbia University has left a couple of extremely good posts on the Korean Studies Mailing List that deserve to be shared here. They ...
Remixing Tagore
This story in the Korea Times about Rabrindranath Tagore’s poem ‘The Lamp of the East’ caught my eye. In the South Korean nationalist imaginat...
Hankyoreh opens up the world of Korean convicted war criminals
At the risk of attracting more trackbacks from the lovely people at Occidentalism, I thought I’d bring people’s attention to this really fascinating...
Sell yourself
“Selling yourself” – one of those phrases we use in a somewhat metaphorical sense, but which nonetheless has a more literal meaning than we pr...
Boston and the Bamboo Grove
I must admit that I’ve not felt at all keen on bringing up here the most recent Korea-related history controversy to hit the news. As many readers are pro...
Is there such a thing as an innocent nation?
Moving away from the news reports for the moment, something a bit more speculative. The above question is one that crops up in my mind every now and then when I...
New book on Paekche
News comes, via the Korean Studies mailing list, that Jonathan Best’s history of Paekche is now out. I wouldn’t normally use this blog to advertise ...
Orthodoxy, or more revisionism? (History news round up II)
Time for part two of my history news round up. Another big history-related story toward the end of last year concerned a proposed new rightwing history textbook...