Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender and Yi Soon Shin: Fallen Avenger: Bad
At Planet Comicon in Kansas City last month, I came across a gentleman selling a comic book series based on the Hideyoshi invasions of Korea, known in Korea as ...
Category: Military
Books/Books and Articles/China-Japan/China-Korea/Choson/Historiography/Korea-Japan/Military/Ming/War/安土桃山
A thought on military and transnational history in lieu of a review
In that odd lull between end-of-semester grading and final exam grading, I finally got around to reading that interlibrary loan book that was due last Friday, K...
Reading Note: Oleg Benesch, “Inventing the way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan”
Before I praise Benesch’s book, a complaint: Oxford UP pricing is absurd. Now that’s not unusual for academic hardbacks, monographs that go to libra...
Bombing makes China modern
One thing that made China truly modern in 1932 and then again in 1937 was that its cities were being bombed. Here is a cartoon by Sapajou, the White Russian car...
Dastardly, Diabolic, Secret, Silent and Deadly Saboteurs
It’s almost like he’s kidding, but surely a professional writer would know that sarcasm doesn’t translate to the page, right? NPR’s Lint...
Heroes and big swords in Shanghai
The 1932 Shanghai War produced its share of heroes, since any war needs heroes, both for domestic and foreign consumption. I just found two stories of a Chinese...
Things I don’t know about Korea, part 1 of many
Now that I’m teaching my Korean History course I am, of course, running into questions I cannot answer. I’m going to post them here periodically: Th...
“Prosthetic Memories”
Seungsook Moon at Japan Focus has an interesting historiographical essay about the contested life and legacy of Park Chung Hee, who led Korea through the 60s an...
Modernization or Japanization? –The Movie “Homeless Angels” 1941
I had a chance to watch a Korean movie from the colonial period, called “Homeless Angels (집없는 천사, 家なき天使),” at the Korean Film Archive (KFA) in Susek...
African mercenaries in Chosŏn
I meant to post a note on this interesting piece at the Oh My News website a couple of weeks ago, but other things intervened. It recounts the story of the blac...
Patriotic School Athletics – under the Japanese and After
To observe that modern “physical culture” (athletics) training in the compulsory schooling system is something closely linked to the conscription sy...
Don’t Take it Literally
I think I’ll continue making posts here and there based on a collection of US military documents from early postwar occupied Korea that I discuss in my la...
A Most Unusual Invasion
Preparations for my oral exams this spring has prevented me from contributing much recently but I have started to take an hour away from my orals reading every ...
Thoughts on Yusin
Readers here might be interested in giving thoughts about a query and my comment regarding Yusin on the Korean Studies Discussion List by Dr. Alon Levkowitz. Hi...