(Part 2) Best products from r/korea

I did get a design-related degree, so I do consider myself an artsy person, but I never learned about textiles formally. I'm Korean-American and I've always loved traditional clothing, so it's just a hobby for me, haha. And wow, I'll be honest, I wasn't sure anybody would be willing to drop that kind of money on my recommendation XD ! I'm sure you'll love it.

Yes, that book is VERY expensive, and I have yet to get it myself, but it's high on my wishlist. I actually bought one of the author's first books on East Asian embroidery to get a taste of what her other books might offer, and I thought it was really good information for the price. It's from 1980 though, so the age does show.

http://www.amazon.com/Oriental-Embroidery-Young-Yang-Chung/dp/0684162482/ref=la_B001JXS6HQ_1_3s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419142855&sr=1-3

It's mostly black and white, and the unhappy reviewer in right in saying that many of the black and white photographs can be difficult to make out details. But the color pages in the middle are good, and the text had enough detailed information on the history, symbolism, and context of embroidery that it was easily worth the less than $10 with shipping. I loved that it had a visual appendix in the back of common groups of motifs used in embroidery and their meanings. The book uses specific famous examples from each culture to give the reader an idea of the culture's unique embroidery: Chinese dragon robe, the Japanese kimono, and the Korean bridal dress. They also have chapters on home accessories, clothing accessories, and screens and banners. The book does a lot of walking you through how the things were made and the techniques used, almost like step-by-step tutorials. It's not an exhaustive book, but it's a great start if you don't mind the unflattering black-and-white photographs and heavy reliance on the text.

http://www.amazon.com/Painting-Needle-Learning-Embroidery-Young/dp/0810945703/ref=asap_B001JXS6HQ?ie=UTF8

This is another, much more modern book from her (2003) that's also very affordable, but I believe this book is also more focused on the actual crafting of embroidery for embroiderers who wish to try it themselves. I have yet to get this book, but it's also on my list.

I'm glad to see other people who are interested in these topics like me =) . I'm hoping to go to Korea very soon with the EPIK program, and I'm looking forward to being able to see all these things in person at their museums and market. Good luck!

Here are a few examples of things I have taken as gifts to Korea:

Good wine, freshly roasted coffee, American foodstuffs (for example, cream cheese is hard to come by there, so I bake a good number of cream cheese refrigerator cookies right before I go, YMMV), nose-bone coffee mugs, that sort of thing.

Regarding the wine, you're really only allowed 750ml (one bottle), but I usually bring more, and simply spread them out in my bags so when the bags are x-rayed they never see more than a bottle or two per bag. I also declare every bottle, but have never had a problem. You can buy wine there, but they tax it heavily.

Regarding the coffee, there are many coffee stores in Korea these days, but I get high-end stuff from a local roaster for all my coffee snob friends, usually roasted a day or two before I leave. For example last time I got one friend some Ethiopian Nano Challa. Good coffee like that is eye-watering expensive in Korea.

Regarding American foodstuffs, you can get quite a bit of that at e-Mart, Costco (in Korea), etc. So you kind of have to do some digging to find stuff that you can't get in Korea. Applesauce is a great example. Believe it or not, but I've not been able to find good applesauce in Korea, like what you might get at Trader Joe's. Hot sauce that we take for granted, like Cholula, is not easy to find. Niche American craft beer, very hard to find there, especially nice IPAs. My son loves the Trader Joe's cinnamon swirl bread, so I've frozen a couple of loaves and taken those. You can't find that kind of thing there.

Clothing can be a tough one unless you know people's size pretty well. But if you live near a famous uni (like UCLA) and can get hoodies with the uni logo, etc., that kind of thing could be good.

Off the top of my head, a few other things that are uniquely North American which might go over well with some people: Pendleton wool shirts, Hudson Bay wool point blankets/throws, high-end wool socks (many Koreans are avid day hikers), and so on.

Obviously, what works for me might not be so great for you, but I hope you get some useful ideas/inspiration.

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)

Nice post! It's great you've found several vegetarian places you like :)

There were two vegan places I wanted to try while I was visiting Korea over the winter holidays: Baru #2 and Loving Hut Honest Vegan in 이태원. I found out that they had both closed down for good.. Then I went to the biggest bookstore in Seoul to get a Korean edition of the novel The Vegetarian, written by a Korean author, and the employees said it's been out of print for years.. eck.

I did get a vegetarian cookbook, and it has some really amazing recipes! If you like to cook and know Korean, I highly recommend it: 하루 한 끼, 채식 한 그릇.

Koreans right now? I'd be hard pressed to find someone in my vicinity to openly profess a nostalgic desire for uh... Let's call it reintegration, but yes, during the colonial period ([1910-1945] and the decades immediately before) there were many who throughout the course of Colonization that either 1) professed loyalty to the empire or 2) believed in a (retrospectively Ill-conceived) pan-Asian unity. Since I'm no longer as familiar with outright collaborators I'll just deal with the latter.

As an example, the first modern novel '무정/Heartless' was written by Lee Kwangsu. In Korean historiography he is viewed in several ways. National history courses may just leave it at that but depending on who you speak with he's either a collaborator or, a 'cultural nationalist.' That is to say as a cultural nationalist, he and other like minded individuals fell short in demanding sovereignty or even autonomy for that matter and pushed for at least recognition for Koreans in partnership with the Japanese.

Lee however was caught up in the idea of a 'New Rome' in the East. This is important since ideas of pan-Asian solidarity (not to be confused with the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere) were in contention with aggregate nationalist waves of thought. Instead of Korean or Japanese state, the idea of 'Daito/Daedong' or The Great East was tinged with social Darwinist conceptions of human division. The New Rome Lee envisioned was a grand struggle among the races of the world, and using Japan as a vehicle, Koreans would survive.

This lineage of thought is further tracked back to Sin Chaeho and even further back to Liang Qichao in China.
And..even the famous (in Korea at least) assassin of one colonial governor-General Ito Hirobumi. Yes, Ahn Joongun was not a nationalist by any definition. He was claimed in nationalist historiography to be a one dimensional nationalist but acted as he did because of sense of betrayal of the pan-Asian dream by Japanese particularism. You can read or Google this from Ahn's 아지아 평화론/동맹설(I don't remember, it's been a while).

Can write more but getting tired. If you're interested read Andre Scmid's "Korea Between Empires" or articles by Tikhanov on Korean pan-asianists.

BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Korea-Between-Empires-Andre-Schmid/dp/0231125399

REVIEW OF BOOK:
" A groundbreaking and border-crossing work in modern Korean intellectual history. A dazzling combination of rich textual analysis, sustained argument engaging the latest historiography and theoretical literature, and limpid, elegant prose, it lays bare the genealogy of twentieth-century Korean nationalist identity and consciousness and challenges the embedded colonizer/colonized binary of much previous scholarship by situating that genealogy in a universalizing discourse which simultaneously embraced both Korea and Japan.

(Cater Eckert, Harvard University) "

I haven't seen most of those either, but would love too. Cool looking birds for sure. I did see an Oriole this summer which was pretty exciting (not nearly as much for the people I was with lol). I've never seen the black-capped Kingfisher, but the ruddy kingfisher that lives in the bamboo forest near our house has been back three years in a row. And I see common kingfishers out on the lake while I'm fishing all the time. Common Kingfishers should be in that album...they're pretty exotic looking!

Here is the English field guide for Korea if anyone is interested. I got mine directly through Birds Korea for quite a bit cheaper, but I don't see it on their site anymore. I think I paid 30,000 a couple of years ago when it came out.

I would definitely ask r/Korean as many people there are longtime Korean learners and can offer good suggestions. However, imho the Integrated Korean books are great, specifically Integrated Korean Beginning 1 is a good start as it teaches you Hangul, grammar, and new vocab words with every lesson. I myself use it for self teaching and it's been working great! I also recommend purchasing the accompanying workbook as it gives you more practice. Best of luck!

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.

I took a trip to Korea, visited a museum and saw Admiral Yi Sun Shin's sword a long time ago. They talked about the Kobukson, the famous turtle ship, from this trip as well, that it was an armor-clad naval vessel fully 300 years before the Monitor and the Merrimac used in the American Civil War.

Many years later, I tried to find out as much as I could about Admiral Yi, his life and death and accomplishments during the Japanese invasion of Korea in the late 1500s. I've read through his diaries, as much as I could get through, and several books by Steven Turnbull.

Absolutely fascinating.

His life could easily become a Hollywood movie. There are some parallels in his life to that of the popular recent k-drama, 도깨 비, Goblin's main character, Kim Shin - specifically around how the King would listen to his court sycophants and the subsequent treatment of his loyal military leader. The recent movie, The Admiral, only focuses on one battle, but from 1592 - 1598, there were some amazing tactics that he developed and employed, winning 33 naval battles while severely outnumbered.

I'll leave you with 2 quotes from his Wikipedia page and a link to a humorous and NSFW recounting of his accomplishments:

Admiral George Alexander Ballard of the Royal Navy considered Yi a great naval commander, and compared him to Lord Nelson of England:

"It is always difficult for Englishmen to admit that Nelson ever had an equal in his profession, but if any man is entitled to be so regarded, it should be this great naval commander of Asiatic race who never knew defeat and died in the presence of the enemy; of whose movements a track-chart might be compiled from the wrecks of hundreds of Japanese ships lying with their valiant crews at the bottom of the sea, off the coasts of the Korean peninsula... and it seems, in truth, no exaggeration to assert that from first to last he never made a mistake, for his work was so complete under each variety of circumstances as to defy criticism... His whole career might be summarized by saying that, although he had no lessons from past history to serve as a guide, he waged war on the sea as it should be waged if it is to produce definite results, and ended by making the supreme sacrifice of a defender of his country."

Admiral Togo regarded Admiral Yi as his superior. At a party held in his honor, Togo took exception to a speech comparing him to Lord Nelson and Yi Sun-sin.

"It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea’s Yi Sun-sin, for he has no equal."

Bad Ass of the Week NSFW

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.

Probably this one.