China Books

The Kwangju Uprising is one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 turned into a bloody people's revolt. In the two decades since, memories of the Kwangju Uprising have lived on, assuming symbolic importance in the Korean democracy movement, underlying the rise in anti-American sentiment in South Korea, and shaping the nation's transition to a civil society. Nonetheless it remains a contested event, the subject still of controversy, confusion, international debate, and competing claims. As one of the few Western eyewitnesses to the Uprising, Linda Lewis is uniquely positioned to write about the event. In this innovative work on commemoration politics, social representation, and memory, Lewis draws on her fieldwork notes from May 1980, writings from the 1980s, and ethnographic research she conducted in the late 1990s on the memorialisation of Kwangju and its relationship to changes in the national political culture. Throughout, the chronological organisation of the text is crisscrossed with commentary that provocatively disrupts the narrative flow and engages the reader in the reflexive process of remembering Kwangju over two decades. Highly original in its method and approach, Laying Claim to the Memory of May situates this seminal event in a broad historical and scholarly context. The result is not only the definitive history of the Kwangju Uprising, but also a sweeping overview of Korean studies over the last few decades. Linda S. Lewis is associate professor of anthropology and director of the East Asian Studies Program at Wittenberg University. (For this item please quote stock ID 18084) ISBN: 9780824825430

[Indent] Writing Women in Korea explores the connections among translation, new forms of writing, and new representations of women in Korea from the early 1900s to the late 1930s. By examining shifts in the way translators handled material pertaining to women, the work of women translators of the time, and the relationship between translation and the original works of early 20th-century Korean women writers, the author attempts to answer such far-reaching questions as: How have women translators contributed to literary and cultural change? How do writing on women and women's writing relate to changes in national identity? Each chapter considers phases and aspects of the process of creating feminine ideals through translation. The work opens with an outline of the Choson period (1392-1910), when a vernacular writing system was invented, making it possible to translate texts into Korean - in particular, Chinese writings reinforcing official ideals of feminine behaviour aimed at women. The legends of European heroines and foreign literary works (such as those by Ibsen) translated at the beginning of the 20th century helped spur the creation of the New Woman (Sin Yosong) ideal for educated women of the 1920s and 1930s. The role of women translators is explored, as well as the scope of their work and the constraints they faced as translators. Finally, the author relates the writing of Kim Myong-Sun, Pak Hwa-Song, and Mo Yun-Suk to new trends imported into Korea through translation. The author argues that these women deserve recognition for not only their creation of new forms of writing, but also their contributions to Korea's emerging sense of herself as a modern and independent nation. In emphasizing the importance of women translators and writers in early 20th-century Korea, this volume places Korean literary and cultural activities in the wider perspective of feminist and cross-cultural studies and contributes to an understanding of the central role of translation in creating new gender and national identities. Theresa Hyun teaches Korean studies at York University, Toronto. (For this item please quote stock ID 21253) ISBN: 9780824826772

'This book represents a moving tribute to the experiences of Korean Americans in Hawai`i. It is with great pride that, 100 years after the first Koreans immigrated to Hawai`i, we have reached a critical mass of interest and enthusiasm for things yobo' - Duk Hee Murabayashi, national co-chair, Centennial Committee of Korean Immigration to the United States. Contributors: Michael Darnay Among, Leomi Bergknut, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, David Choo, Victoria Sung Hye Chai Cintrón, Debra Kang Dean, David Hyun, Peter Hyun, Kloe Sookhee Kang, Melvia Choy Kawashima, Nora Okja Keller, Jinja Kim, Nolan Kim, Richard Kim, Willyce Kim, Alvin Koo, Brenda Kwon, Don Lee, Lucretia Leong, Walter Lew, Chris McKinney, Melanie Sukie McKinney, Trina Nahm-Mijo, Sun Namkung, Gregory Pai, Inez Kong Pai, Gary Pak, Chan Park, Mindy Eun Soo Pennybacker, Robert Pennybacker, Daisy Chun Rhodes, Maxine Lim Shea, Cathy Song, Ellen Soo Sun Song (Kang), Constance Han Stewart, Don Takeya, Wayne Russel Wagner, Jackie Young. (For this item please quote stock ID 22702) ISBN: 9780910043656

~Distributed for Tamal Vista Publications.

~Many followers of Korean literature believe Ko Un - one of the country's most revered and prolific writers - will be nominated for a Nobel Prize. Once a Buddhist monk, then a political dissident, and always a poet, Ko Un is 'able to make the intensely personal into work having universal appeal and significance,' writes David McCann, translator and professor of Korean Literature.

~Ko Un's voice rings through the profound and often intensely funny poems in Traveler Maps. (For this item please quote stock ID 23277) ISBN: 9780917436062

~Hawai`i Studies on Korea. Published with the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawaii.

~North Korea remains the most mysterious of all Communist countries. The acute shortage of available sources has made it a difficult subject of scholarship. Through his access to Soviet archival material made available only a decade ago, contemporary North Korean press accounts, and personal interviews, Andrei Lankov presents for the first time a detailed look at one of the turning points in North Korean history: the country's unsuccessful attempts to de-Stalinize in the mid-1950s. He demonstrates that, contrary to common perception, North Korea was not a realm of undisturbed Stalinism; Kim Il Sung had to deal with a reformist opposition that was weak but present nevertheless.

~Lankov traces the impact of Soviet reforms on North Korea, placing them in the context of contemporaneous political crises in Poland and Hungary. He documents the dissent among various social groups (intellectuals, students, party cadres) and their attempts to oust Kim in the unsuccessful 'August plot' of 1956. His reconstruction of the Peng-Mikoyan visit of that year - the most dramatic Sino-Soviet intervention into Pyongyang politics - shows how it helped bring an end to purges of the opposition. The purges, however, resumed in less than a year as Kim skillfully began to distance himself from both Moscow and Beijing. The final chapters of this fascinating and revealing study deal with events of the late 1950s that eventually led to Kim's version of 'national Stalinism'. Lankov unearths data that, for the first time, allows us to estimate the scale and character of North Korea's Great Purge.

~Meticulously researched and cogently argued, Crisis in North Korea is a must-read for students and scholars of Korea and anyone interested in political leadership and personality cults, regime transition, and communist politics.

~Andrei Lankov is lecturer in the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. (For this item please quote stock ID 23318) ISBN: 9780824828097

Soon after the inception of Buddhism in the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., the Buddha ordered his small band of monks to wander forth for the welfare and weal of the many, a command that initiated one of the greatest missionary movements in world religious history. But this account of a monolithic missionary movement spreading outward from the Buddhist homeland of India across the Asian continent is just one part of the story. The case of East Asian Buddhism suggests another tale, one in which the dominant eastward current of diffusion creates important eddies, or countercurrents, of influence that redound back toward the centre. These countercurrents have had significant, even profound, impact on neighbouring traditions. In East Asia perhaps the most important countercurrent of influence came from Korea, the focus of this volume. Korea was subject to many of the same forces that catalysed the growth of Buddhism on the Chinese mainland, and Korean commentarial and scriptural writings (all composed in literary Chinese) sometimes had as significant an impact in the region as texts written in China proper. Any comprehensive description of the evolution of the broader Sinitic tradition of Buddhism must therefore thoroughly consider Korea?s contributions. This is the first book to explore in detail Korea?s integral role in the development of Buddhism both in China proper as well as throughout the broader East Asian region. The book?s introduction identifies the pervasive patterns of the influence of Korean Buddhism in China, Japan, and eventually even in regions as distant from the peninsula as Szechwan and Tibet. This is followed by chapters that examine the role played by the Paekche kingdom in introducing Buddhist material culture (especially monastic architecture) to Japan and the impact of Korean scholiasts on the creation of several distinctive features that eventually came to characterise Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. The lives and intellectual importance of the monks Sungnang (fl. ca. 490) and Wonch?uk (613-696) are reassessed, bringing to light their role in the development of early intellectual schools within Chinese Buddhism. Later chapters discuss the influential teachings of the semi-legendary master Musang (684-762), the patriarch of two of the earliest schools of Ch?an; the work of a dozen or so Korean monks active in the Chinese T?ien-t?ai tradition; and the Huiyin monastery, located in the heart of the Southern Song but having special ties with Korea through the prince-monk Uich?on (1055-1101). This illuminating and thought-provoking collection will be appreciated by scholars of Korean and Buddhist studies and will stimulate East Asia scholars in general to explore the roles played by non-Chinese East Asian peoples in the evolution of the region as a whole. Robert E. Buswell, Jr., is professor and former chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA and founding director of UCLA?s Centre for Buddhist Studies and Centre for Korean Studies. (For this item please quote stock ID 24891) ISBN: 9780824827625

Despite the significance of Korea in world Christianity and the crucial role Christianity plays in contemporary Korean religious life, the tradition has been little studied in the West. Christianity in Korea seeks to fill this lacuna by providing a wide-ranging overview of the growth and development of Korean Christianity and the implications that development has had for Korean politics, inter-religious dialogue, and gender and social issues. The volume begins with an accessibly written overview that traces in broad outline the history and development of Christianity on the peninsula. This is followed by chapters on broad themes, such as the survival of early Korean Catholics in a Neo-Confucian society, relations between Christian churches and colonial authorities during the Japanese occupation, pre-millennialism, and the theological significance of the division and prospective reunification of Korea. Other chapters look in more detail at individuals and movements, including the story of the female martyr Kollumba Kang Wansuk; the influence of Presbyterianism on the renowned nationalist Ahn Changho; the sociopolitical and theological background of the Minjung Protestant Movement; and the success and challenges of Evangelical Protestantism in Korea. The book concludes with a discussion of how best to encourage a rapprochement between Buddhism and Christianity in Korea. Robert Buswell, Jr., is professor of Buddhist studies in the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA, and founding director of UCLA's Center for Korean Studies and Center for Buddhist Studies. Timothy Lee is assistant professor of World Christianity at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. (For this item please quote stock ID 25237) ISBN: 9780824829124

Modern Korean Fiction The dark side of South Korea's 'economic miracle' emerges in The Dwarf, Cho Se-hui's enormously popular and critically acclaimed work. First published in 1978, it speaks to the painful social costs of reckless industrialisation, even as it tellingly portrays the spiritual malaise of the newly rich and powerful, and a working class subject to forces beyond its control. Cho's lean, clipped, deceptively simple style, the rapidly shifting points of view, terse dialogue, and subtle irony evoke the particularities of life in 1970s South Korea in the presence of global economic forces. The desperate realities of life for the dwarf, the proverbial little guy upon whose back Korea's economic transformation largely took place, are emotively rendered in twelve linked stories examining the lives of a labouring family, a family of the newly emerging middle class, and that of a wealthy industrialist. The stories have overlapping characters and situations: the murder of a swindler, a family's eviction from a squatter settlement, the assassination of an important executive, the dwarf's fantasy of a planet where life is easier, his later suicide and the subsequent fate of his dispersed friends and family members. (For this item please quote stock ID 27088) ISBN: 9780824831011

A deeply compelling saga of love, jealously, honour, and greed, And So Flows History (Yôksanûn hûrûnda, 1947) depicts the relentless power of exterior forces on the individual lives of three generations of the illustrious Cho family - from the waning years of the Choson dynasty in the late 19th century to the tumultuous post-liberation era. Hahn Moo-Sook (1918-1993) is one of Korea's most celebrated writers of modern realist literature. She received many awards for her writing, including the 1986 Grand Prix of the Republic of Korea Literature Award for her novel Encounter. And So Flows History, Hahn's first novel, received first prize in a 1947 contest organised by a major Korean daily. Young-Key Kim-Renaud is the eldest daughter of Hahn Moo-Sook. She is chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and professor of Korean language and culture and international affairs at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Hawai`i Studies on Korea: Published in association with the Center for Korean Studies, UH, with support from the Korean Literature Translation Institute (For this item please quote stock ID 25227) ISBN: 9780824828882

Hwang Sun-won (1915-2000) is one of modern Korea's masters of narrative prose. Trees on a Slope (1960) is his most accomplished novel - one of the few Korean novels to describe in detail the physical and psychological horrors of the Korean War. It is an assured, forceful depiction of three young soldiers in the South Korean army during the latter stages of the war: Hyônt'ae, the arrogant and overconfident squad leader; the stolid and dependable Yun-gu; and 'the Poet' Tong-ho. The war affects the men in different ways. Before he can return home, Tong-ho takes his own life after shooting an officer and a prostitute. Hyôn-t'ae, finding himself removed from situations of mortal danger, spends most of his time drinking; in the end he is arrested for abetting in the suicide of a young girl. Only Yun-gu is able to make the successful transition to postwar life. His ability to survive the encroachments of others, exploit limited resources, and capitalise on the lessons of harsh experience make him emblematic of Korea over the centuries. Trees on a Slope will introduce an English-reading audience to an important voice in modern Asian literature. Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean literature and literary translation at the University of British Columbia. He has collaborated with Ju-Chan Fulton on several other translations of Korean fiction, including Hwang Sun-won's The Moving Castle (1985) and the award-winning Korean women's fiction anthology Words of Farewell (1989). He is also the co-translator, with Kim Chong-un, of A Ready-Made Life (1998). (For this item please quote stock ID 24691) ISBN: 9780824828875

(For this item please quote stock ID 17910) ISBN: 9788988095126

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 18083) ISBN: 9780824825348

[Indent] Since the late 1960s, the lives of south Koreans have been reconstructed on the shifting ground of urbanisation, industrialisation, military authoritarianism, democratic reform, and social liberalisation. Class and gender identities have been modified in relation to a changing modernity and new definitions of home and family, work and leisure, husband and wife. Under Construction provides an illuminating portrait of south Koreans in the 1990s - a decade that saw a return to civilian rule, a loosening of censorship and social control, and the emergence of a full-blown consumer culture. It shows how these changes affected the lives of Korean men and women and the very definition of what it means to be ?male? and ?female? in Korea. In a series of provocative essays written by Korean and Western scholars, we see how Korean women and men actively engage, and at times openly contest, the limitations of gender. Under Construction is part of a decisive turn in the anthropology of gender - from its early quest for the causes of female subordination to a finely-tuned analysis of the historical, cultural, and class-based specificities of gender relations and the tension between gender as an ideological construct and as a lived experience. Firmly grounded in the political and economic history of south Korea, this long-awaited volume fills an important gap in Korean studies and East Asia gender studies in English. Laurel Kendall is curator in charge of Asian Ethnographic Collections at the American Museum of Natural History. Contributors: Nancy Abelmann, Cho Haejoang, Roger L. Janelli, Laurel Kendall, June Lee, So-Hee Lee, Seungsook Moon, Dawnhee Yim. (For this item please quote stock ID 17102) ISBN: 9780824824884

Here for the first time are translations of five plays by Oh T'ae-sok, Korea's leading playwright and one of the most original dramatists and stage-directors working in Asia today. Drawing inspiration from both East and West and combining styles as disparate as ancient Korean masked dance-drama and contemporary avant-garde theatre, these plays range from raucous comedy to historical tragedy, from explorations of the impact of the Korean War to bitter satires of modern Korean life. A stunning visual storyteller, Oh mines Korea's cultural and theatrical traditions - not to preserve them but to interrogate them in light of present social conditions and to reconstruct a new theatrical form that challenges both old and current conventions alike. His metacultural theater investigates 'Koreaness' from the perspectives of many different cultures, while at the same time probing the meaning of culture itself. (For this item please quote stock ID 4025) ISBN: 9780824820992

(For this item please quote stock ID 14572) ISBN: 9780824820718

[Indent] The diplomat and scholar-official Min Yong-hwan (1861-1905), described by one contemporary Western observer as 'undoubtably the first Korean after the emperor,' is best remembered in Korean historiography for his pioneering diplomacy at the courts of Tsar Nicholas II and Queen Victoria in the late 1890s. Furthermore, he is considered to be the foremost patriot of Korea's Taehan era (1897-1907). This pioneering study of Min Yong-hwan is long overdue and provides us with a new perspective on a period of Korean history that still casts its shadow over the region today. This new biography of Min contributes substantially to our understanding of this period by looking beyond the established view of Korea as being polarised between reformists and reactionaries in the late Choson era. In doing so, it provides us with deeper insight into the full range of responses of the late Choson leadership to the dual challenges of internal stagnation and external intervention at the juncture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the recent history of Korea, late nineteenth century imperialism, and Russian, Japanese, American, and British foreign policy in northeast Asia. Michael Finch is visiting assistant professor of Korean studies at Keimyung University in Taegu. (For this item please quote stock ID 18085) ISBN: 9780824825201

[Indent] How do people make sense of their world in the face of the breakneck speed of contemporary social change? Through the lives and narratives of eight women, The Melodrama of Mobility chronicles South Korea's experience of just such dizzyingly rapid development. Abelmann captures the mood, feeling, and language of a generation and an era while providing a rare window on the personal and social struggles of South Korean modernity. Drawing also from television soap operas and films, she argues that a melodramatic sensibility speaks to South Korea's transformation because it preserves the tension and ambivalence of daily life in unsettled times. The melodramatic mode helps people to wonder: Can individuals be blamed for their social fates? How should we live? Who can say who is good or bad? By combining the ethnographic tools of anthropology, an engagement with prevailing sociological questions, and a literary approach to personal narratives, The Melodrama of Mobility offers a rich portrait of the experience of compressed modernity in the non-West. Nancy Abelmann is associate professor of anthropology, East Asian languages and cultures, and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; she is also a teaching faculty member of Asian American studies. (For this item please quote stock ID 21241) ISBN: 9780824827496

A deeply compelling saga of love, jealously, honour, and greed, And So Flows History (Yôksanûn hûrûnda, 1947) depicts the relentless power of exterior forces on the individual lives of three generations of the illustrious Cho family - from the waning years of the Choson dynasty in the late 19th century to the tumultuous post-liberation era. Hahn Moo-Sook (1918-1993) is one of Korea's most celebrated writers of modern realist literature. She received many awards for her writing, including the 1986 Grand Prix of the Republic of Korea Literature Award for her novel Encounter. And So Flows History, Hahn's first novel, received first prize in a 1947 contest organised by a major Korean daily. Young-Key Kim-Renaud is the eldest daughter of Hahn Moo-Sook. She is chair of the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures and professor of Korean language and culture and international affairs at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Hawai`i Studies on Korea: Published in association with the Center for Korean Studies, UH, with support from the Korean Literature Translation Institute (For this item please quote stock ID 25226) ISBN: 9780824829087

'A Distant & Beautiful Place marks Yang Kwi-ja clearly as an author of great talent. Deft descriptive touches, a knack for well-chosen images, and an abiding concern with narrative structure are matched by insightful exploration of issues of real social importance' - Acta Koreana, July 2003 Somewhere on the periphery of Seoul, between the modern metropolis and the traditional farming communities, lies a 'distant and beautiful place, the neighborhood of Wonmi-dong. Here, a young couple from the city struggles to make a home for themselves; a hapless 'salary man' is forced into door-to-door sales after losing his job; a precocious seven-year-old questions the meaning of friendship and community. Everyone seems to be chasing the intangible dream of a better life. Set against the backdrop of South Korea's breakneck drive for industrialization and economic development in the 1980s, these compassionate and often humorous stories capture the essence of modern South Korean life-including the ubiquitous atmosphere of violence and fear that clouded the country prior to democratisation in 1987. They also depict the Korean people's unfailing optimism and love of life. A Distant & Beautiful Place first appeared as a series of linked stories in literary journals between 1985 and 1987. It was published as the collection Wonmi-dong saramdul in 1987 and quickly became a best seller. Yang Kwija, one of South Korea's most respected and popular authors, has since published dozens of novels and shorter pieces. (For this item please quote stock ID 25795) ISBN: 9780824826390

'Here the cultural history of an ancient people is revealed, beautifully, through myths, short lyrics, adventure tales, fables, romance, portraits, satire, semi-fictional biographies - all retain a remarkable freshness and power. In every way - in literary and vernacular works chosen, arrangement and annotation - this is an exemplary anthology' - Booklist. (For this item please quote stock ID 9333) ISBN: 9780824807566

For more than half of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two hostile and competitive nation-states, each claiming to be the sole legitimate expression of the Korean nation. The division remains an unsolved problem dating to the beginnings of the Cold War and now projects the politics of that period into the twenty-first century. Korea?s Twentieth-Century Odyssey is designed to provide readers with the historical essentials upon which to unravel the complex politics and contemporary crises that currently exist in the East Asian region. Beginning with a description of late-nineteenth-century imperialism, Michael Robinson shows how traditional Korean political culture shaped the response of Koreans to multiple threats to their sovereignty after being opened to the world economy by Japan in the 1870s. He locates the origins of both modern nationalism and the economic and cultural modernization of Korea in the twenty years preceding the fall of the traditional state to Japanese colonialism in 1910.

Robinson breaks new ground with his analysis of the colonial period, tracing the ideological division of contemporary Korea to the struggle of different actors to mobilize a national independence movement at the time. More importantly, he locates the reason for successful Japanese hegemony in policies that included - and thus implicated - Koreans within the colonial system. He concludes with a discussion of the political and economic evolution of South and North Korea after 1948 that accounts for the valid legitimacy claims of both nation-states on the peninsula.

(For this item please quote stock ID 32173) ISBN: 9780824831745