The Korean version of Frog in a Well is in some ways the most disappointing blog in the IKK. When I first became aware of it last year, I thought it was going to develop into a must-go-to site for information on Korean history. They have that often enough, but we also get a liberal mix of lefty hackdom like “the recent glorious victory of Hizbollah partisans.”
It’s not that I am against lefties hacking away per se (I enjoy reading blogs like Cathartidae and Kotaji as a balance to my own righty hackdom.), but you sometimes have to turn your BS filter way up to separate history from propaganda, which is a disappointing reminder of my undergrad days.
But they live up to their promise often enough and deliver useful posts list this one about out-of-copyright books on Korea being available online. Some of the titles available include:
Korea and Her Neighbors: A Narrative of Travel, with an Account of the Recent Vicissitudes and…
By Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy) Bird 1905 (quoted frequently in the series of postings here at Frog in a Well starting here)Korean Tales: Being a Collection of Stories Translated from the Korean Folk Lore, Together with…
By Horace Newton Allen 1889Problems of the Far East: Japan, Korea, China
By George Nathaniel Curzon 1894Glimpses of the Orient, Or, The Manners, Customs, Life and History of the People of China, Japan…
By Trumbull White 1897Terry’s Japanese Empire, Including Korea and Formosa: With Chapters on Manchuria, the Trans-Siber…
By T. Philip (Thomas Philip) Terry 1914
I think the purchase of a few reams of paper and a trip to the local copy store for binding is in order.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Is it just me or are none of these available to be viewed/downlaoded ? maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake but I can’t seem to find anything except the bibliographic details and an option to buy it from various sources or find it in a library (all of which I must say I feel confident doing without googles help).
The original frog in a well post has some links to books that are available through the gutenburg project though, maybe not as big name I guess but it actually works which is kinda nice
.
It was my impression from the FiaW post that those guys are ready to be downloaded. I will check on that when I get to my office tomorrow (my computer at home often does not show clickable buttons).
I am sick and damn tired of these bleeding-heart liberals too! haha
But seriously, most of their scribblings are over the line, especially so during wartime. If one were to look back at American history, many other wartime presidents were also unpopular during their time in office and openly attacked by their critics, but ultimately quite warmly received after their presidencies in our history books. Face the facts liberals, you lost every single branch of the federal government. *SNORT*
This would be a fantastic business idea, for Kinkos or mom and pop shops here in Korea (which I really love, the places have a ton of character!!) to start printing and binding these books as a new form of service.
–Remort
It appears that the books may not be downloadable outside the United States. Google may be limiting access for those outside.
Proxy. I have a solution for every problem!
–Remort
Anyone having any luck with these books?
downloaded curzons . There are parts that aren’t copied well. Overall, it’s decent.
Thanks for the link.
Personally, I love Frog in a Well. I mean, yeah, the politics are a bit left of my tastes, but I’m sure some of their contributors find this site unbearably rightist, yet to my knowledge, none of them have ever called the Marmot’s Hole “one of the most disappointing English-language Korean blogs.” And the guy you cited, Pak Noja, is an excellent scholar, regardless of his politics.
It’s one thing to disagree with something someone posts. It’s another to call another blog disappointing because of its political slant.
But that’s just me.
I share some of Mr. Jackson’s disappointment. For a site that makes some claim to true scholarship, when posts contain phrases like, “the recent glorious victory of Hizbollah partisans” I question the seriousness of the author’s ‘scholarship’.
The download works fine for me. Of course, I have a states-side address, so dunno about people in other places. The download button is also in a bit of a counter-intuitive place — off to the right instead of in what one might consider the ‘main body’ of the page. Maybe people are just missing it? (I did, on first look.)
Lessee… FDR & Truman — Definitely unpopular in their own times, but later re-evaluated. LBJ and Nixon — Well, you can draw your own conclusions there about who’s more-liked in retrospect. Wilson, Lincoln, and the rest…
Of course, isn’t the reason why a lot of the war-time presidents were unpopular the fact that they had pretty liberal social agendas for their times? In other words, wasn’t it the conservatives who were attacking those presidents during large portions of their tenures?
“I share some of Mr. Jackson’s disappointment. For a site that makes some claim to true scholarship, when posts contain phrases like, “the recent glorious victory of Hizbollah partisans” I question the seriousness of the author’s ’scholarship’.”
I agree. You have to draw the line somewhere, and anti-semitism is that line, in my opinion. Certainly its enough to call a blog ‘disappointing’.
Now, now. I think suggesting that lefties love fundamentalist wack-jobs like Hezbollah is as unfair and untrue as someone suggesting that right-wingers love their sexual predators
Dear Leader,
As I said in the main post, I do not mind leftist writing per se. I enjoy reading that stuff all the time (heck I even read the Daily Kos regularly). Those sites and their right wing counterparts are fun and informative.
The disappointing part is that I was expecting the site to be something different. FiaW, as far as I can tell, purports itself to be a site for historical research. I would prefer it if they would use that blog for historical research and leave their personal politics for their own blogs.
I am certainly not telling them what to write, just stating my opinion of their product.
TWG,
I did not make that quote up. It was cut-n-pasted. Unless you can find a conservative blog talking about “the glorious victory of the Congressional boy-buggers,” your comparison is not valid.
But your intended point is taken. If Hezbollah were a Christain fundamentalist group and not fighting Israel, I am sure that they would not have gotten such praise. It is not the fundi part that makes them popular; it is the anti-Israeli part.
I had no problem with a couple of the books when I originally saw them on the frog site. But some didn’t come through then, still don’t appear to, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them. Anybody got info for how to simply connect through a proxy?
As a contributor to Frog in a Well I would say that I’ve also been a little disappointed with its progress, although for somewhat different reasons to Andy. This is certainly no reflection on Konrad, who should be commended for his efforts to bring together people studying the history of East Asia in one place to provide information, insights and general bloggery. But I think that the Korea blog hasn’t yet established itself with enough regular contributors and diversity of subjects and opinions (I’d love to have written more myself, but other more pressing work has prevented me).
On the subject of mixing history and politics – I really do not see the problem here. Anyone who believes that the two are not thoroughly mixed all the time is living in fantasy land. There is no pure academic world of truth – and this is after all, a blog, not an academic journal by any means. As Robert points out above, Pak Noja is a very serious scholar of Korea history and also someone engaged with contemporary Korea. Personally I think that is admirable. If you want to disagree with his political opinions on the parallels he may draw between past and present in a blog post, then fine, that’s what the blog world tends to be about. If on the other hand you want to cast aspersions on his academic credentials then you really need to read some of his academic work and provide a critique of that.
As for Shakuhachi’s comment… well I can’t even be bothered.
Owen [kotaji]
Kotaji,
Blogs are what you make of them. You can tailor your writing to fit the medium you are writing in. I think you will find that what I writing at TCS Daily or in other ‘regular media’ has a much different feel than what I write here.
How about mixing politics with politics? Pollster.com, as you might guess from the name, analyzes polls. From the posts themselves, I would generally not be able to tell the personal opinions of the posters. My disappointment comes from the fact that I was expecting FiaW to be more like Pollster.com.
Now, if FiaW is a place for guys interested in history to shoot the breeze and have some fun, then I take back everything I said.
BTW, I was not just picking on Pak Noja: The Hizbollah comment just jumped out at.
I’m not able to download any of these books either. I’ve already put up a few copyright free books on the Galbijim Wiki and would like to put these up too. Anyone care to send them to me? Drop me a message here: http://wiki.galbijim.com/User_talk:Mithridates
Hmm… that’s odd. Maybe Google doesn’t want the downloads crossing borders because of the uncertainty of copyright laws. Maybe the download would work through Korean Google (just replace ‘.com’ with ‘.co.kr’).
Thanks Zonath. Are they small enough that you could send them through email? My email address is mithradates at gmail . com (note the slightly different spelling). If they’re too big then maybe through MSN if you use that.
The files are about 85 megs altogether. The smallest is about 3 megs, and the largest is around 50… Probably a bit too large for email. I’ve uploaded the files to my school webdisk account, and made them public, so you should be able to download them from the following address:
https://webdisk.lclark.edu/xythoswfs/webui/guffey
Let me know if there are any problems with this… just select the files and hit the ‘download’ button up top. Cheers.
Nice! I just downloaded them all. Wow, even one of the smaller ones is 343 pages. I suppose I’ll just try to keep up a good pace of a few pages a day.
Er…we’re sure that these aren’t in text form somewhere else, right? Just checking. *^^*
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