From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Korean men from all walks of life trained in the arts of war to prepare not for actual combat but to sit for the state military examination ("mukwa"). Despite this widespread interest, only for a small minority did passing the test lead to appointment as a military official. Why, then, did so many men aspire to the "mukwa"?
Eugene Y. Park argues that the "mukwa" was not only the state's primary instrument for recruiting aristocrats as new members to the military bureaucracy but also a means by which the ruling elite...
From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Korean men from all walks of life trained in the arts of war to prepare not fo...
Koreans are known for their keen interest in genealogy and inherited ancestral status. Yet today's ordinary Korean would be hard pressed to explain the whereabouts of ancestors before the twentieth century. With A Family of No Prominence, Eugene Y. Park gives us a remarkable account of a nonelite family, that of Pak Tŏkhwa and his descendants (which includes the author). Spanning the early modern and modern eras over three centuries (1590-1945), this narrative of one family of the chungin class of people is a landmark achievement. What we do know of the chungin, or...
Koreans are known for their keen interest in genealogy and inherited ancestral status. Yet today's ordinary Korean would be hard pressed to explain th...
On October 26, 1909, the Korean patriot An Chunggŭn assassinated the Japanese statesman Itō Hirobumi in Harbin, China. More than a century later, the ramifications of An's daring act continue to reverberate across East Asia and beyond. This volume explores the abiding significance of An, his life, and his written work, most notably On Peace in the East (Tongyang p'yŏnghwaron), from a variety of perspectives, especially historical, legal, literary, philosophical, and political. The ways in which An has been understood and interpreted by contemporaries, by later generations, and...
On October 26, 1909, the Korean patriot An Chunggŭn assassinated the Japanese statesman Itō Hirobumi in Harbin, China. More than a century l...
