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Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
Andrei N. Lankov, Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956 (2004).
Chan E. Park, Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing (2003).
Michael J. Seth, Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea (2002)
Michael Finch, Min Yong-hwan: A Political Biography (2002).
Linda S. Lewis, Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising (2002).
Wayne Patterson, The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawai‘i, 1903–1973 (2000).

Other books
Peter H. Lee, The Record of Black Dragon Year (2000).
Miho Choo and William O'Grady, Handbook of Korean Vocabulary (1996).
Kajiyama Toshiyuki, The Clan Records: Five Stories of Korea (1995).
Kenneth M. Wells, ed., South Korea’s Minjung Movement: The Culture and Politics of Dissidence (1995).
Peter H. Lee, ed., Pine River and Lone Peak: An Anthology of Three Choson Dynasty Poets (1991).
Jong-suk Chay, Diplomacy of Asymmetry: Korean-American Relations to 1910 (1990).
Wayne Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawai‘i, 1896–1910 (1988).
James Irving Matray, The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941–1950 (1985).
Youngnok Koo and Dae-Sook Suh, eds., Korea and the United States: A Century of Cooperation (1984).

Pacific Association for Korean Studies
Dae-Sook Suh, ed., Korean Studies: New Pacific Currents (1994).

Miscellaneous
Van Zile, ed., The Halla Huhm Dance Collection: An Inventory and Finding Aid (1998).

Multimedia Teaching Materials
Edward J. Shultz, The History and Culture of Korea: Filmstrips, Narration, Text and Study Guide (1985).

Monograph Series
19 Consonant Lenition in Korean and the Macro-Altaic Question, by Samuel E. Martin. 1996. 176 pp. ISBN 0-8248-1809-1. $20.00.
18 Tense and Aspect in Korean, by Sung-Ock S. Sohn. 1995. 192 pp. ISBN 0-8248-1691-9. $18.00.
17 Thematic Relations and Transitivity in English, Japanese, and Korean, by Nam Sun Song. 1993. 150 pp. ISBN 0-8248-1580-7. $15.00. Order titles below from: Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i, 1881 East-West Road, Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822. Tel. (808) 956-7041; fax (808) 956-2213.
16 Koreans in China, translated and ed. by Dae-Sook Suh and Edward J. Shultz. 1990. 186 pp. ISBN 0-917536-18-5. $20.00.
15 Koreans in the United States: A Fact Book, by Herbert R. Barringer and Sung-Nam Cho. 1989. 130 pp. ISBN 0-917536-17-7. $10.00.
14 Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Cooperation and Regional Develop-ment Between Chejudo and Hawaii. 1988. 186 pp. ISBN 0-917536-16-9.
13 The Writings of Henry Cu Kim: Autobiography with Commentaries on Syngman Rhee, Pak Yong-man,and Chong Sun-man, ed. and trans. with an introduction by Dae-Sook Suh. 1987. 306 pp. ISBN 0-8248-1159-3. Out of Print.
12 Koreans in the Soviet Union, ed. by Dae-Sook Suh. 1987. 138 pp. Cloth ISBN 0-8248-1126-7. Paper,ISBN 0-8248-1155-0. Out of Print
11 The Grammar of Korean Complemen-tation, by Nam-Kil Kim. 1984. 162 pp. ISBN 0-917536-14-2. $12.00.
10 Japanese Sources on Korea in Hawai‘i, compiled by Minako I. Song and Masato Matsui. 1980. 251 pp. ISBN 0-917536-15-0. $8.00.
9 Studies on Korea in Transition, ed. by David R. McCann, John Middleton, and Edward J. Shultz. 1979. 2 45 pp. ISBN 0-917536-13-4. $8.00.
8 Films for Korean Studies: A Guide to English-Language Films about Korea, comp. by Lucius A. Butler and Chae-soon T. Youngs. 1978. 167 pp. ISBN 0-917536-12-6. $6.00.
7 Materials on Korean Communism, 1945-1947, trans. and ed. by Chong-Sik Lee. 1975. 268 pp. ISBN 0-917536-11-8. $6.00.
6 The Korean Language: Its Structure and Social Projection, ed. by Ho-min Sohn. 1975. 126 pp. ISBN 0-917536-04-5. Book out of print; available in elec-tronic form as an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file.
5 The Traditional Culture and Society of Korea: Thought and Institutions, ed. by Hugh H. W. Kang. 1975. 176 pp. ISBN 0-917536-03-7. Out of Print.
4 The Traditional Culture and Society of Korea: Art and Literature, ed. by Peter H. Lee. 1975. 90 pp. ISBN 0-917536-02-9. Out of Print.
3 The Traditional Culture and Society of Korea: Prehistory, ed. by Richard L. Pearson. 1975. 209 pp. ISBN 0-917536-01-0. Out of Print.
1/2 Parental Encouragement and Col- lege Plans of High School Students in Korea, by Choon Yang and George Won; and Gains and Costs of Postwar Industrialization in South Korea, by Youngil Lim. 1973. 51 pp. ISBN 0-917536-00-2. $4.00.

 

Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956

by Andrei N. Lankov, August 2004
296 pp., cloth, ISBN 0-8248-2809-7
$48.00

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 N. Lankov is a lecturer in the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University.



Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing

by Chan E. Park, March 2003, 392 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-2511-X, $44.00 cloth

From its humble "straw mat" origins to its paradoxical status as a national treasure, p'ansori has survived centuries of change and remains the primary source of Korean narrative and poetic consciousness. In this innovative work, Chan Park celebrates her subject not as a static phenomenon but a living, organic tradition adapting to an ever-shifting context. Drawing on her extensive literary and performance backgrounds, Park provides insights into the relationship between language and music, singing and speaking, and traditional and modern reception. Her "performance-centered" approach to p'ansori informs the discussion of a wide range of topics, including the amalgamation of the dramatic, the narrative, and the poetic; the invocation of traditional narrative in contemporary politics; the vocal construction of gender; and the politics of preservation.

Chan E. Park is associate professor of Korean language, literature, and performance folklore at Ohio State University.



  Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of Schooling in  South Korea

   
by Michael J. Seth, 2002. 328 pp.
    ISBN 0-8248-2534-9, $49.00 cloth.

   
In the half century after 1945, South Korea went from an impoverished, largely rural nation ruled by a succession of authoritarian regimes to a prosperous, democratic industrial society. No less impressive was the country's transformation from a nation where a majority of the population had no formal education to one with some of the world's highest rates of literacy, high school graduates, and university students. Drawing on their premodern and colonial heritages as well as American education concepts, South Koreans have been largely successful in creating a schooling system that is comprehensive, uniform in standards, and universal. The key to understanding this educational transformation is South Korean society's striking, nearly universal preoccupation with schooling—what Koreans themselves call their "education fever."

This volume explains how Koreans' concern for achieving as much formal education as possible appeared immediately before 1945 and quickly embraced every sector of society. Through interviews with teachers, officials, parents, and students and an examination of a wide range of written materials in both Korean and English, Michael Seth explores the reasons for this social demand for education and how it has shaped nearly every aspect of South Korean society. He also looks at the many problems of the Korean educational system: the focus on entrance examinations, which has tended to reduce education to test preparation; the overheated competition to enter prestigious schools; the enormous financial burden placed on families for costly private tutoring; the inflexibility created by an emphasis on uniformity of standards; and the misuse of education by successive governments for political purposes.

Michael J. Seth is assistant professor of history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.



 

Min Yong-hwan: A Political Biography

by Michael Finch, 2002. 256 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-2520-9, $45.00 cloth

                                 

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 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 polarized 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.




Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising
by Linda S. Lewis, 2002. 208 pp
ISBN 0-8248-2479-2, $50.00 cloth.
ISBN 0-9248-2543-9, $19.95 paper.

 

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 memorialization of Kwangju and its relationship to changes in the national political culture. Throughout, the chronological organization 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.




The Record of the Black Dragon Year
translated by Peter H. Lee, 2000. 240 pp
ISBN 89-7155-050-3, $27.00 cloth.

 

The Imjin nok, or Record of the Black Dragon Year, is the first popular tale inspired by the Japanese invasion of Korea between 1592 and 1598. As a collection of folk narratives clustered around major events and characters, it exists in some forty manuscript and printed versions, long and short, in the vernacular and literary Chinese. Peter H. Lee provides the first accurate and readable translation of this cultural text in English.

In the Introduction, Lee traces the rise of popular storytelling in late Choson times, analyzes ten recurrent motifs shared by the most extant versions in the vernacular, and firsthand eyewitness accounts of Korean captives in Japan along with similar accounts of the war in the records of dream journeys and kasa poetry.

Peter H. Lee is professor of Korean and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.





The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawai‘i, 1903-1973
by Wayne Patterson, 2000. 284 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-2093-2 , $49.00 cloth.
ISBN 0-8248-2241-2 , $24.95 paper.

 

"A clear, persuasive account." --Choice, September 2000

"An insightful and well-researched analysis" --Acta Koreana, 2000

"Patterson provides us with a candid and thorough snapshot of a single generation of Korean immigrants in Hawai`i, each chapter ... systematically exploring a single aspect of their lives.... He underestimates the potential contribution of his research to both Asian and Asian American studies." --Journal of Asian Studies, November 2000

"The Ilse is the most comprehensive work published to date on the initial wave of Korean immigrants to the United States. A well executed qualitative analysis of the life history of the community, the book is also extremely eloquent and entertaining to read.... It should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of East Asian immigration in America." --Eui Young Yu, California State University, Los Angeles

On January 13, 1903, the first Korean immigrants arrived in Hawai'i. Numbering a little more than a hundred individuals, this group represented the initial wave of organized Korean immigration to Hawai'i. Over the next two and a half years, nearly 7,500 Koreans would make the long journey eastward across the Pacific. Most were single men contracted to augment (and, in many cases, to offset) the large numbers of existing Chinese and Japanese plantation workers.

Although much has been written about early Chinese and Japanese laborers in Hawai'i, until now no comprehensive work had been published on first-generation Korean immigrants, the ilse. Making extensive use of primary source material from Korea, Japan, the continental U.S., and Hawai'i, Wayne Patterson weaves a compelling social history of the Korean experience in Hawai'i from 1903 to 1973 as seen primarily through the eyes of the ilse. Japanese surveillance records, student journals, and U.S. intelligence reports--many of which were uncovered by the author--provide an "inner history" of the Korean community. Chapter topics include plantation labor, Christian mission work, the move from the plantation to the city, picture prides, relations with the Japanese government, interaction with other ethnic groups, intergenerational conflict, the World War II experience, and the postwar years.

The Ilse is an impressive and much-needed contribution to Korean American and Hawai'i history and significantly advances our knowledge of the East Asian immigrant experience in the United States.

Wayne Patterson is professor of history at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and author of The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910 (UH Press, 1988).





Handbook of Korean Vocabulary
by Miho Choo and William O’Grady. 1996.
ISBN 0-8248-1738-9, $46.00 cloth.
ISBN 0-8248-1815-6, $26.95 paper.

 

This first-ever “root dictionary” of Korean designed for second-language learners contains more than 1,500 lists of words built from shared roots. The lists offer a unique and efficient way for learners to acquire new words. On encountering a word, one can consult the lists for its component roots and discover many other semantically related words built from the same elements. The Handbook consists of two sections, one presenting roots of Chinese origin and the second containing native Korean roots. Within each section, each list begins with the relevant root written in Korean script together with the Chinese character (if there is one) and its English translation. The entries for individual words within a list include information about each item’s colloquial interpretation, the literal meaning of the component parts, and the Chinese characters used to write it. The Handbook will be of value to teachers and students of Korean as well as to native speakers of Korean who wish to use the word structure of their native language as a starting point for the study of English vocabulary.





The Clan Records: Five Stories of Korea

by Kajiyama Toshiyuki, translated by Yoshiko Dykstra
Introduction by George Akita and Yong-ho Ch’oe, 1995. 186 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-1532-7, $18.00 cloth.

The five stories in this collection are the first English translations of Japanese works dealing with Korea under Japan’s harsh military rule. The stories included in the volume are: “The Clan Records,” “The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty,” “Seeking Life amdist Death: The Last Day of the War,” “When the Hibiscus Bloom,” and “A Crane on a Dunghill in Seoul in 1936.” “[The stories] are fascinating, sensual, and informative, shedding light on the thought and behavior of colonizers and the colonized in occupied Seoul.” -Journal of Asian Studies






South Korea’s Minjung Movement:
The Culture and Politics of Dissidence

ed. by Kenneth M. Wells. 1995.
ISBN 0-8248-1700-1, $35.00 cloth.

The minjung (people’s) movement stood in the forefront of the nationwide tide that swept away the military in June 1987 and opened up space for more democratic politics, more responsible economics, and new directions in culture. Yet, as concrete reforms take shape, serious debate has arisen over the identity of the minjung and the values the term represents. This is the first work in English to grapple specifically with the nature, impact, and implications of the diverse forms taken by this national development that lies at the center of the last three decades of tumult and change in South Korea. It offers insights from the per-spective of Korean and Western experts in a variety of disciplines, including leaders of the movement itself.






Pine River and Lone Peak:
An Anthology of Three Choson Dynasty Poets

trans. by Peter H. Lee, 1991. 197 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-1298-0, $24.00 cloth.

 

Taken from the pen names Chong Ch’ol and Yun Sondo, respectively, Pine River and Lone Peak represents the works of the sixtenth- and seventeenth-century Korean masters of the short lyric poetry (sijo) and narrative verse (kasa) forms. This new translation also includes the works of Pak Illo, as well as a literary and cultural introduction to the period, enabling the modern reader to understand the continuous dialogue with the tradition in which these poets engaged.






Diplomacy of Asymmetry: Korean-American Relations to 1910

by Jong-suk Chay, 1990. 239 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-1236-0, $32.00 cloth.

This book contains a wealth of information on early Korean-American relations and offers valuable insights-especially into the role of public opinion in the foreign policy-making process and the influence of systemic change on diplomatic relations.





The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawai‘i, 1896-1910

by Wayne Patterson. 1988. 274 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-1090-2, $30.00 cloth.
ISBN 0-8248-1650-1, $19.95 paper.

“With remarkable attention to detail, Patter-son not only explains how and why Koreans came to Hawai‘i and their fate on arrival, but also the major political, economic, and diplomatic intrigues involved [in Seoul, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Hawai‘i’s sugar indus-try].”- History





The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941-1950

by James Irving Matray. 1985. 351 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-0973-4, $30.00.

“Matray‘s monograph . . . is now the best treatment of the subject. . . . [He] addresses a host of issues that have divided scholars for a decade.”-Reviews in American History






Korea and the United States: A Century of Cooperation

ed. by Youngnok Koo and Dae-Sook Suh, 1984. 397 pp.
ISBN 0-8248-0945-9, $30.00.

The century-long relationship between Korea and the United States is examined in this integrated series of studies by Korean and American scholars. The volume grew out of a conference held at the University of Hawai‘i’s Center for Korean Studies in May 1982 in observance of the centennial of the signing of the treaty establishing relations between the two nations. Not limited to an analysis of the political and economic dimensions of the relationship, this book considers as well the historical, cultural, social, and intellectual ties between Korea and the United States.






Pacific Association for Korean Studies

Korean Studies: New Pacific Currents

ed. by Dae-Sook Suh. 1994.
ISBN 0-8248-1598-X, $35.00 cloth.

This volume contains sixteen papers selected from the nearly one hundred presented at the First Pacific Basin Conference on Korean studies, held in Honolulu in 1992. The papers have been selected to reflect the wide range of academic disciplines and geographic regions rep-resented at the conference. They are grouped into five broad categories-history, literature, philosophy and religion, politics and economics, and sociology-and address such topics as rethinking popular culture in 1930s Korea, women’s literature in the Choson period, early Western studies of Korean religions, North Korean foreign policy, and ethnic identity and commu-nity involvement of young Korean Americans.





Miscellaneous

The Halla Huhm Dance Collection:
An Inventory and Finding Aid

ed. by Judy Van Zile. 1998.
$20.00. Spiral bound. 181 pp.

The Halla Huhm Dance Collection spans the period from the early 1900s through 1997 and documents a large part of the professional life of Korean dancer Halla Pai Huhm and Korean dance in Hawai‘i. It contains more than 700 items of correspondence, flyers, programs, and newspaper clippings in English, Korean, and Japanese; more than 6,500 photographs; several videotapes; and numerous awards and other memorabilia. Following her immigration to Hawai‘i in 1949, Halla Huhm and the Korean dance studio she founded became the longest continuing contributors to the perpetuation of Korean dance in the Islands. She and her students performed at countless functions sponsored by a variety of community organizations in diverse settings. The catalog of the collection includes a biographical sketch, an essay on Koreans in Hawai‘i, a chronology of events relating to Korean immigration to Hawai‘i, a list of suggested readings, and an annotated listing of all items in the collection.






Multimedia Teaching Materials

The History and Culture of Korea:
Filmstrips, Narration, Text and Study Guide

by Edward J. Shultz. 1985.
$100.00.

Order from:
Center for Korean Studies
University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
1881 East-West Road
Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Tel. (808) 956-6389; fax (808) 956-2212

This set of six filmstrips, with accompanying narration, text, and study guide, examines chronologically Korea’s past and present. They are useful for world civilization and East Asian history courses, as well as upper-division courses in history and political science and specialized sociology, art, and literature courses. They are also of benefit to advanced high school study programs. Each filmstrip runs approximately 20 minutes. The titles are: The Korean People and Ancient Korea; The Silla Kingdom; Koryo: Korea’s Golden Age; Choson Yi Dynasty: Yangban Society; Korea’s Modern Transformation; and Korea Today: Division and Development.


Order from:
Order Department
University of Hawai‘i Press
2840 Kolowalu Street
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888
Tel. (800) 956-2840 or (808) 956-8255
fax (800) 650-7811 or (808) 988-6052