A Korean blogger has set up a beautiful site introducing Korea’s early modern architecture through period post cards.
It’s an absolute MUST SEE. Seriously. Who needs online porn when you have stuff like this?
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For those of you who don’t know, yes there were in fact Korean Kamikaze pilots during WWII. There were in fact 18 confirmed and probably more.
The actress Fukumi Kuroda is leading the charge (and footing most of the bill) to set-up a monument to Kamikaze pilot Tak Kyung-hyun in his hometown of Sacheon. It’s actually been built, it [...]
The National Archive has created an online 3-D model of Keijo Imperial University (now Seoul National University) as it was during the Japanese imperial period.
The archive has also posted the floor plans of colonial-era schools, and plans to create eventually an online archive of colonial-era architecture.
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Upcoming Royal Asiatic Society–Korea activities of interest to M-Holers:
Tuesday, April 8th: RAS-K Lecture-Meeting, featuring Dr. Andrei Lankov (well-known researcher on social and cultural aspects of 20th-Cen Korean modernization, including the DPRK, a Professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University and a Visiting Fellow at Australian National U, columnist for several publications, PhD from Leningrad State University) speaking on [...]
I did the introduction to my American government class yesterday. As part of it, I was talking about hegemony. I asked the students something like “was there any country that was politically and culturally dominant in East Asia 500 years ago?”
….. (cricket chirping)
I tried rephrasing the question a few times, but still got nothing. I did a [...]
Ganghwa Onsuri Anglican Church.
Jeondeungsa Temple.
Ganghwa Anglican Church.
On Sunday, this humble blogger — having recently picked himself up a Nikon 55-200mm VR lens — found himself on Ganghwa Island. As it would turn out, I had very little cause to actually use the lens, but I did get to stop by two very beautiful old churches [...]
Today Samil-jeol, marking the start of the March 1 Independence Day.
Here are some photos I shot a couple of weeks ago at Seodaemun Prison History Museum for SEOUL magazine. Enjoy.
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The NY Times blog has a little video of an empty North Korean Banquet hall, from a VBS documentary called, “The Vice Guide to North Korea”.
There is more on the VBS documentary here.
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February 27, 2008 – 12:42 pm
An interesting editorial in the IHT, regarding Russia’s hoarding of 10–15 billion dollars worth of art, taken from the Nazis during WWII, reminds one of other situations, such taken from Korea, by Japan, now a part of China and Russia. If one craves legitimacy, pass a law (Russia) or create a “NorthEast Project“.
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February 13, 2008 – 1:42 pm
This Lunar New Year took me back to Kangjin City, in Kangjin County, which is the home of the poet Kim Yun-sik “Young Rang” and the place of exile for Jeong Yak-Yong, aka “Dasan” (Tea Mountain), who was one of the most prolific writers and scholars of the Chosun Dynasty. The above picture is of [...]
February 13, 2008 – 10:55 am
Most of the links in this post are to Korean-language articles in the online Naver encyclopedia—albeit with pictures, which are intelligible in any language. I’ll add links to English-language articles as I find them.
Given the tragedy that recently beset Sungnyemun, this seems as good a time as any to clear up the incumbent confusion over the [...]
February 11, 2008 – 6:09 pm
This church in Mokpo look a tad funny? There’s a reason — built in the early 1930s, it was originally a Japanese Buddhist temple. In fact, it’s one of not-even-a-handful of examples of colonial Japanese Buddhist architecture left in Korea (another in Gunsan’s Dongguk-sa, which still functions as a Buddhist temple).
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January 30, 2008 – 2:10 pm
If Korea got its “Saving Private Ryan” with “Taegukgi,” it will soon get its “Band of Brothers,” too.
Logos Film announced yesterday that it will soon begin production of “Road No. 1,” a 10-part miniseries dealing with the Korean War.
The title refers to National Road No. 1, which ran from Seoul to Pyongyang at the time [...]
January 13, 2008 – 11:21 pm
Upcoming Royal Asiatic Society–Korea activities of interest to M-holers:
Tomorrow Tuesday January 15th: Well-known 19th-20th-cen Historian-of-Korea Prof Lew Young-ik (PhD Harvard 1972, Chair of Korean Studies at Yonsei Univ GSIS, my fellow Governing Council Member of RAS-K) will give the first RAS Lecture of the year, on “Early Korean Encounters with the United States and Japan”. That’s the title [...]
January 9, 2008 – 4:07 pm
Horace Allen once described an encounter that took place during a dinner party at one of the legations in Seoul in which a Korean noble man fainted with fear. Allen wrote:
“One of these men [Korean nobles], who was sitting next to me, on one occasion suddenly pitched over, his wide hat brim upsetting his glasses while [...]
December 24, 2007 – 3:00 pm
Once again Christmas is upon us. As most of you are well aware, Christmas is a relatively new event in Korea. It is next to impossible to say when it first arrived - maybe with the early missionaries, or perhaps with Lucius Foote the first American Minister to Korea. We do, however, know when the first [...]
December 16, 2007 – 4:02 pm
In Choson, one of the greatest fears for city dwellers was fire. Because Korean homes were built so close to one another and made of highly combustable material, fires quickly spread from one house to another. Within a short period of time, whole blocks, and in some cases large parts of the city, were destroyed.
One of the worst fires in [...]
December 14, 2007 – 3:11 pm
In 1896, Russia was the fourth country to provide military advisors to Korea. Prior to the Russians, the Chinese and Japanese provided instructors in the early 1880s, and the Americans in 1888-1890 (longer if you count the efforts of General Dye and Colonel Nienstead). In 1898, a Russian newspaper declared proudly “the former teachers of [...]
December 14, 2007 – 1:24 pm
The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling on Japan to apologize to and compensate women it mobilized as “comfort women” during the Pacific War. No word yet, however, on when said body will call on European governments (i.e., the governments the parliament actually represents) to apologize for raping and pillaging over half the world’s [...]
December 10, 2007 – 7:42 pm
Tonight! the last Lecture Meeting of this year, with Dr. Richard D. McBride (Fulbright Senior Researcher, PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA), on “The World of Buddhist Devotional Practice in Silla Korea”. He will describe several of the interesting dimensions of that topic — merit-making and divination practices, repentance rituals, dharani procedures, religious communities, and [...]
