asia

It is always difficult to find a good introductory text in English for any of the Asian countries outside of China and Japan, due mainly to the fact that facility with the required asian language does not necessarily translate into a facility with English. The pressure to publish necessarily prevents one from committing the requisite time to writing something with the epic scope of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

This book offers a good overview of the stretch of Korean history with a strong narrative balanced by detailed descriptions of local life and culture during the different periods. There is a lively discussion of consequences and the organization of the book leads us to be able to draw pertinent parallels to what has happened in latter periods of history.

After reading this - what did I gain?
1) I was able to gain a sense of the tradition of Korean history - and further understand the resonances of words such as Silla, Paekchae, Chosun - (in the same way I finally understood how Germany, Allemand and Deutschland could all refer to the same country - these being different tribes who lived in the area)

2)A sense that whatever hardships Koreans have suffered in this century they have seen before - whether it is in the form of Chinese incursions, or the mad rampage of the warlord Hideyoshi in the 16th century. Korea has been divided before.

3) A better sense of Korea as unique cultural entity - with its own centers of excellence, such as celadon, hangul, etc.

My only reservation with the book is that it dwells too much on latter day history from Japanese colonial occupation until the 1980s. Obviouly the sources are better but it left me feeling that pacing changed from that of grand narrative into detailed analysis (This may have been because this book is a combination of two books) But all in all it gave me a better sense of where everything fits than Bruce Cumings' book "Korea's Place in the Sun" - which should be read in conjuction with this book.

Eckert has provided a solid survey history of the peninsula that stands as a reliable introduction to the politics and culture of Korea in a single volume. As with most surveys, fascinating intrigues and cultural depth are sacrificed in order to provide an overview of the essentials. It is an excellent introductory text, written in a lucid style noteworthy for its clarity of expression. David R. Bannon, Ph.D., author "Race Against Evil."

I should start by saying that it's not easy to find a Korean history book in English that was actually written by Korean historians and scholars. You can find many authored by US and British authors, and having browsed through some of them, I strongly recommend AVOIDING them - I'll explain at the end of my review.

On to the book: This is a fascinating account of Korean history from ancient times up to the 1980's, a span of over 2000 years. Each chapter covers a different period, and the chapters share the same organization, describing the social, cultural, political, philosophical/religous, scholarly, and military aspects of the period in respective subsections. This makes it easy to later refer to previous chapters and compare different periods. Understandably, the level of detail provided increases along with the stability of the country.

The style and content changes noticeably though after the pre-Industrial Age chapters. The history up to this point is analagous to European medieval history with kings, queens, heroic warriors and devious power struggles to control the throne. However, as the 20th century dawned, Korea was overrun by Japan and roughly half a century of occupation ensued. From this point on, the book's strength is its account of modern Korea and the motivations of the Korean government. This is where accounts by foreign authors invariably fail and take on obvious biases based on the "official" information the Korean government and their own governments have dispensed. Having several Korean relatives both in the US and Korea, I should emphasize that this book's account of modern history is definitely politically liberal and populist. It presents a view of politics that is probably more agreeable to Korean university students and professors and less agreeable to older Korean generations with more conservative views.

As an end-to-end reading experience, I really enjoyed this book. I mention 'keep a notepad handy' in the title of this review, and I really do encourage that. You see, the only major problem I had with this book was that the ancient history would quickly become confusing due to the frequent use of similar names, particularly the names of various kings. Also, while I'm amazed at the balance made between depth and breadth to keep a complete history under a billion pages, some of the descriptions of important historical figures are regrettably short - too short to etch them into your memory. For these reasons, I seriously recommend keeping notes (or heck, use a spreadsheet if you really want to keep this stuff straight) about the major figures and events as you go along. I really, REALLY wish they had provided a summary timeline or at least a summary of the kings as an appendix, but no such luck. If you don't keep notes, you may wind up reading the whole thing, enjoying it immensely, but then being completely incapable of recalling correct names and dates. Hint- if you ever get a Korean history trivia question "which king did ?", just guess King Tejo and you've got about 50/50 odds of being right.

In summary, I highly recommend this book. It's also a great source of inspiration to learn more about specific people, places, and events in Korean history.

[follow-up to my initial statements]
Korean history is best told by Koreans and NOT foreign authors. Why? As shown by the histories of China, Korea, and Japan, "western" culture has often incorrectly interpreted "eastern" culture. For example, western authors frequently confuse which Korean king did what. This is often because they failed to note that kings were typically referred to by one name while alive and another after their death. Also, as with many other countries, the history of Korea contains many events where the Korean government has intentionally hidden or distorted certain aspects of its culture to foreign governments. This is especially true of the relationships between China, Korea, and Japan - those three countries have played cat and mouse with each other for centuries. You can find a Chinese, Korean, and Japanese account of the same historical event and they may have significantly different views. One of them may describe a particular battle as a victory, another calls it a crafty political ploy, and the other calls it an insignificant accident.

I should also clarify that while the author is listed as "Eckert", this was translated into english by a group of American (Harvard??) and Korean scholars/historians. That's it for my diatribe - hope it helps.