Top products from r/korea

Joseon era:

• A Review of Korean History, Vol.2: Joseon Era; Woo, Han Young (2010)
  
• Sources of Korean Tradition, Vol. 1: From Early Times Through the 16th Century (Introduction to Asian Civilizations); Lee, Peter H. (ed) (1996)
  
• Sources of Korean Tradition, Vol. 2: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries; Lee, Peter H. (ed) (1996)
  
  I prefer the 'Review' more, but it might come across as a little dry. I feel that it does a fair job of discussing a number of topics related to the creation and running of the Joseon Dynasty, breaking the dynasty up into smaller components and then focusing on some areas (arts, military, cultural practices) within those smaller time frames. 'Sources' for me came across as more academic than 'Review' but you might enjoy it more. 'Sources' includes translations of primary sources, which is helpful, while 'Review' includes images such as paintings and maps.
  
  General:
  
  
• Korea Unmasked: In Search of the Country, the Society and the People; Rhie Won-bok (2005)
  
  A comic book that goes into the 'making' of Korea and Korean culture. I have some reservations about this one but if you don't take it too seriously it can be a fun and easy way to get introduced to a number of topics related to Korea.
  
  'Modern' Korea:
  
  
• The Dawn of Modern Korea; Lankov, Andrei (2007)
  
• Korea Through Western Eyes, Book, Written in English; Neff, Robert (2009)
  
• The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History; Oberdorfer, Don (2013)
  
• Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History; Cummings, Bruce (2005)
  
• The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies; Breen, Michael (2014)
  
• Korea And Her Neighbours...; Bird, Isabella (2011; original 1897)
  
  Lankov's book is a collection of newspaper articles he wrote entertaining subjects like the story of Korea's first automobiles, the introduction of the first telephones, etc. Easy to digest and they offer a glimpse of what society was like at each point in time; not a 'serious' book on Korean history, though. Neff's book was a chore to get through and it felt like no editing had gone into the book before publishing. If I'm not mistaken this also started out as a series of articles for one of the local newspapers; the transition from article to book did not go quite as well.
  
  It's probably been 10 years since I read the books from Breen, Oberdorfer and Cummings, which makes it a little difficult to write a lot about them. Cummings I know gets criticized for being pro-North Korea in his writing, so that's something to keep in mind, while Oberdorfer I think was a correspondent living in Korea so may have a more 'eyewitness' approach to some of the events. Bird's book is a description of her travels in Korea during the Joseon period and I remember it being an interesting read. Not a balanced historical account by any means - and it obviously suffers from being written from an outside perspective at a time when ethnocentrism was more prevalent - but it may be an alternative to consider. You should be able to find a .pdf copy of that one online.
  
  
• Fifteen Years Among The Top-Knots: Or Life In Korea; Underwood, Lillias H. (2007, original 1904)
  
  Haven't read this one, but I've seen others mention it in the past. It's another first-person account from Korea at the cusp of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of a medical missionary. Again, not an objective history book, but if you prefer first-person narratives it may at least be worth a look. A .pdf copy has been published online, this one by the University of Oregon.
  
  Edit: One I forgot to mention, but which I've also heard is used in some English-language classes on Korean history/studies:
  
  
• Korea Old and New: A History; Eckert, Carter J. (1991) (I just noticed this is also mentioned by seaturtles7777)

This is a list that I saved (from reddit a while back. I wish I could give credit to the original poster, but the person who posted it also quoted the list. So whoever compiled this list. KUDOS! I wish I could give you credit:

>So the broader history book is A New History of Korea and starts very very far back. It will provide a general overview of Korean history. As for modern history if you don't know much about Korea's modern history a good place to start is Korea's 20th Century Odyssey. It starts in around the 1890s and if I remember correctly ends with the democracy movements of the 1980s. It very clearly divides the different periods of Korea's 20th century experience e.g. the colonial period, the war and the Park Chung-Hee regime. It is a very good starting point. If you want to have a deeper understanding of the colonial period there are two books I would recommend, the first being Colonial Modernity in Korea which covers a lot of the developments in Korea during the colonial period. Another book I want to recommend is Under the Black Umbrella which is a collection of first hand experiences and stories of people who lived during the colonial period. As for the Park Chung-Hee period there are two suggestions I have but they mostly focus more on economic policy and development. The first book is Korea's Development Under Park Chung-Hee and the second book is Reassessing the Park Chung-Hee Era. Both are pretty high in economic content but the second book does also have a lot of content focusing on political developments. If you read a few of these you will have a good understanding of Korean modern history.

Ha-Joon Chang, The East Asian Development Experience: The Miracle, the Crisis and the Future (2007)

This title isn't entirely about South Korea, but it is written by a well-know Korean-born Cambridge economist and offers a non-Marxist heterodox perspective on East Asia in general and has a lot about South Korea. Might be worth checking out for you. But you may already know about this one, since Chang is fairly famous. He has more works that specifically focus on South Korea, but I'm not sure if they're translated into English.

Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (2005)

This one is more about general history of the Korean peninsula, but it still has a fairly extensive section devoted to the post-war economic development of the Korean peninsula, especially the similar yet ultimately divergent economic paths of the two Koreas. For all its detractors, it is definitely a classic in Korean historiography written in the English language, so if you haven't heard of it yet, it is definitely worth checking out.

Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (2004)

This one is also a comparative historical study, but it devotes almost a third of its length on South Korea, and provides a very good overview of the link between colonization and economic development in South Korea, in addition to covering the latter years of modern Korean history. It is written by a Princeton political scientist that has extensive knowledge of comparative economic development, so it would be worth a look as well.

One note of caution though is that, if you really want to understand the post-war South Korean economic history, you also have to have some background on the economic impact of Japanese colonization (and this topic is a very, very, very, very contentious one in modern Korean history). The last one may be of help on this count.

according to a really informative and entertaining book I picked up, korean entertainment firms acknowledge the fact that geniuses that can sing and dance in perfect sync like Michael Jackson only surface once in a hundred years, and that members of the Beetles can't meet in the garage and start their own band in korea, because everyone is busy studying, and preparing for their futures instead of practicing guitare. So that's why they train potential idols since elementary school, grooming them for the stage for 10 years! Imagine the risks and dedication involved for such a long-term investment. There are different things to respect for everything. It follows the korean belief that success should be a result of hard work and selfless dedication, not birthright or genetics. BTW the stage is really where these artists shine. You get choreography and moves you never seen in music videos. Personally, I prefer dance practice videos like this over the official music vids any day because they show the work they put into making a simple stage into a living storytelling arena.

I've used a lot of her recipes successfully. I also started using her once I returned back to the States to cook some good Korean food.

I have used the following recipes to great success from her:

Tteokbokki

Buldak

Kimchi Fried Rice

Soybean rice

Kimbap

Bulgogi


Maangchi also has a great cookbook. But her website has a lot more recipes than the cookbook does. But the cookbook does have about 95% of what you want, including the side dishes.

I'd suggest this book for a great holistic and logical overview of pretty much the whole language and an excellent reference moving forward..well worth the money and from what I've seen, one of a kind.
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Korean-Language-Bruce-McDonough/dp/1514717328

in the appendices of this book is a good recommended book list too. it's a very good place to start, i think.

for vocab, i'd just get this book: https://www.amazon.com/Korean-Essential-Vocabulary-6000-Foreigners/dp/8955184891 and focus on the "A"-level words first, then the "B", then the "C" later. I can tell you that at least 97% of the words in this book are useful and contemporarily used....i have used this as my main vocab list and used many of these words in speaking and writing with no real problems.

Here are a few books I recommended to someone else that you might find useful

>So the broader history book is A New History of Korea and starts very very far back. It will provide a general overview of Korean history. As for modern history if you don't know much about Korea's modern history a good place to start is Korea's 20th Century Odyssey. It starts in around the 1890s and if I remember correctly ends with the democracy movements of the 1980s. It very clearly divides the different periods of Korea's 20th century experience e.g. the colonial period, the war and the Park Chung-Hee regime. It is a very good starting point. If you want to have a deeper understanding of the colonial period there are two books I would recommend, the first being Colonial Modernity in Korea which covers a lot of the developments in Korea during the colonial period. Another book I want to recommend is Under the Black Umbrella which is a collection of first hand experiences and stories of people who lived during the colonial period. As for the Park Chung-Hee period there are two suggestions I have but they mostly focus more on economic policy and development. The first book is Korea's Development Under Park Chung-Hee and the second book is Reassessing the Park Chung-Hee Era. Both are pretty high in economic content but the second book does also have a lot of content focusing on political developments. If you read a few of these you will have a good understanding of Korean modern history.

"The New Koreans" is a recent publication (copyrighted 2017, although the narrative ends right before the juiciest moment of the decade, choigate, so more like 2016) that goes deep into korea's past and present. Even some points I never considered before.

However, read it with a grain of salt, because some of the things it says are just flat out wrong or biased (like claiming that korea's panic over pyramid scheme con artistry were an act of protectionism against western soap products, and implying that comfort women issue is nothing to bat an eye about because Joseon was a patriarchal society at the time. REALLY? ).

The summary says it outlines the three miracles of korea, each reportedly blew the author's mind as it happened. Economic miracle of the 70s, then democratic miracle of the 90s, then the miracle of breaking out in the world stage as a cultural powerhouse in the last decade. He doesn't really go into the last part in detail, and I can't blame him because he's been alive since the days of Park Chung Hee.

If you want a nice, entertaining and also informative reading on the cultural part, then pick up Birth of Korean Cool

You should use this subreddit instead: https://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/

I think the best advice is don't procrastinate pronunciation. Korean is extremely difficult to pronounce despite being easy to read. Learning pronunciation will make it much easier to retain new vocabulary and grammar. If you don't learn proper pronunciation then yeah you can load vocab and grammar into your short term memory. But it will never get converted to long term memory.

There's two learning tracks. The free track, and the paid track.

Here's the free track: ($0)

1. Pronunciation: http://www.memrise.com/course/365575/korean-pronunciation-skeleton/
   
   
2. Vocabulary: http://www.memrise.com/course/534607/every-ttmik-lesson-levels-1-9/
   
   
3. Grammar: http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/category/lessons/level-1/
   
   Here's the paid track: ($55)
   
   
4. Pronunciation: https://fluent-forever.com/pronunciation-trainers/#.VqB2x-h96Uk (with this software: http://ankisrs.net/ )
   
   
5. Vocabulary: http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Essential-Vocabulary-6000-Foreigners/dp/8955184891/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453356797&sr=8-1&keywords=korean+vocabulary+6000 (with this method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWDKXLvyJNc )
   
   
6. Grammar: http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Grammar-Use-Beginning-Intermediate/dp/8959951986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453356821&sr=8-1&keywords=korean+grammar+in+use (with this method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC12tluKB3U )
   
   The paid track will get you there quicker. But manage your expectations. On average it takes approximately 2200 hours of studying to become proficient in Korean, compared to 500 hours for Spanish. You will probably need to spend 4x the amount of effort to learn a new word or grammar point in Korean than you did with Spanish. It's definitely a challenge, but if you succeed you'll have a very unique skill.

I don't know of one book that fits all of those descriptions, but individually, here is a sampling of the books I have in my collection.

Korea Old and New : History

Korea's Place in the Sun, by Bruce Cumings

The Park Chung Hee Era, edited by Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel

​

I hope these help!

​

A New History of Korea by Ki-Baik Lee has been my favorite introduction to Korea and Korean history to date. It is missing modern (post 1960) history, so you'll need to supplement it, but it is otherwise great.

Korea's place in the sun by Bruce Cummings and Korea's 20th century Odyssey by Michael Robinson are both good overviews of modern Korean history starting in the late 19th century.

Sources of Korean tradition is a good collection of primary sources with background and analysis.

Sam Howley's The Imjin War is a great look at the invasion of 1592 and Yi Sun-shin. Very well written. (And recently made available as an e-book).

For something more specific but still fascinating, I really like Don Kirk's Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung. It's a real warts-and-all look at one of Korea's biggest conglomerates. Hyundai hated it so much they commissioned someone to write a "friendlier" history of the company as a response.

Taiwan and Korea had similar models to Japan. HK and Singapore don't count as city states. Nonetheless as Joe Studwell points out in his book, Korea did it best and continues to do so -> http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00B3M47VC/

Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History is amazing. You can find it at What the Book bookstore.

I'd say you should be sincere and apologize and contact your embassy for a list of lawyers. In the meantime, familiarize yourself with this book.

I recommend this book for those who want to know about the unique business strategies some of korean chaebols used to achieve an extremely diversified portfolio without sacrificing diseconomies of scale

Sources of Korean Tradition is a good place to start, but it is a hefty 2 volume work.

http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Korean-Tradition-Vol-Civilizations/dp/0231105673/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376104890&sr=8-1&keywords=sources+of+korean+tradition

Early Korean Literature by David McCann is a slimmer volume, and more accessible.

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Korean-Literature-David-McCann/dp/023111947X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376105046&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=david+mccann+traditional+korean

These do not have anything on urban myths/paranormal. I'll PM if I find anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Citizen-Soldier-Story-American-Korean-ebook/dp/B00U3BFF1A

This book has a decent run down of what it’s like to be in the ROK army. It’s a decade or so out of date but has the major points covered.

When I studied at Yonsei, we had to read Korea Old and New. It's filled with great information, but it is not the most exciting history book I've read...

I'm almost ordering the Michael J Seth one, but he did a revised edition called A Concise History of Korea. Thinking in buy this one instead. After read some pieces of China and Japan history, I want to learn about Korea's too.

Buy this guy's book:


https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Citizen-Soldier-Story-American-Korean-ebook/dp/B00U3BFF1A



Essentially he's a Gyopo who works as an English teacher, gets snagged by the MMA, attempts to get out by enlisting in the US Army and, right as he's getting shipped out via Osan, he hits the Korean immigration exit controls at Osan and gets caught and serves the full two years.

Probably this one.

Non-mobile: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3M47VC/

^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?

I found it informative. I believe a similarly informative read, if you don't like Cumming's book, is The Two Koreas by Oberdorfer

>Like above in Korea, it is generally socially wrong to be that cruel to a person new to Korean trying to learn, but it still happens.

I'll hold my opinion on this because I'm not actually sure if it's considered inappropriate here or not. I do know that Young Chun was not simply relentlessly bullied by his peers and superiors in the army for his poor Korean, he was actively placed in roles where he would be forced to use Korean higher than his level and cause inconvenience for other people in the service. That kind of behavior would land a huge discrimination charge in most militaries in the developed world, even in the early 00s when he served. It's possible that South Korea is working towards multicultural tolerance, but it is still having trouble coming to terms with the kinds of exclusionary behavior faced by a minority of the population.

I will say that for sure linguistic discrimination is a real thing in South Korea. Public figures and celebrities from the south side of the country have to "get rid" of their accent and speak Seoul Korean in public unless they're doing some kind of comedic entertainment performance.

> E6 "entertainers" and "karaoke dancers" don't get tested

They should get tested.

> It seems to me they are targeting 1. foreigners and 2. Foreigners who teach English language

I totally agree. But the fact is that some native English teachers caused this negative stereotype. This isn't like the silly "native teachers have HIV" bullshit from that racist MBC documentary a few years ago. The fact is that many NET's have been busted for drugs. Hell, this dude even wrote a book about it. Just a few years ago there was a massive pot bust in southern Gyeonggi where the dealer (an American) ratted out his customers, the majority of whom were E-2 teachers. 30+ people simultaneously got charged. As I said, if you want to blame someone, blame the minority of stupid teachers that for some reason can't abide by Korea's laws.