[KS] New books from UH Press

[bradshaw at hawaii.edu]

Several new books on Korea have appeared from UH Press over the past 
several months.
For a cumulative listing of recent titles, see: 
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/ks/koreabooks.html

Yang Kwija; Kim So-young, Julie Pickering, trs. A Distant and Beautiful Place
Set against the backdrop of South Korea's breakneck drive for 
industrialization and economic development in the 1980s, these 
compassionate and often humorous stories capture the essence of modern 
South Korean life-including the ubiquitous atmosphere of violence and fear 
that clouded the country prior to democratization in 1987.

Michael J. Seth. Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of 
Schooling in South Korea
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.

Louis Baldovi, ed. A Foxhole View: Personal Accounts of Hawaii's Korean War 
Veterans
"A terrific read. A Foxhole View tells an important story of fear, heroism, 
brotherhood, and courage. It is at one and the same time a gritty, 
horrible, and glorious story. I found myself awed by the everyday, humble, 
matter-of-fact valor of these men." --Dan Boylan, University of 
Hawai`i--West O`ahu

Choon-Hak Cho, Yeon-Ja Sohn, Heisoon Yang. Korean Reader for Chinese 
Characters
Korean Reader for Chinese Characters will help students of Korean master 
basic Chinese characters that are frequently encountered in everyday 
situations. More than five hundred characters are targeted in exercises 
that aid in the efficient study of the forms, meanings, and sounds of 
individual characters and their compounds. Although the primary goal of the 
Reader is recognition of basic Chinese characters, students are encouraged 
to learn to write them properly by inclusion of a section on stroke order. 
The Reader is also designed to reinforce skills in reading and writing in 
Korean while studying Chinese characters.

Michael Finch. Min Yong-hwan: A Political Biography
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 
is long overdue and provides us with a new perspective on a period of 
Korean history that still casts its shadow over the region today.


Joel Bradshaw
Journals & Web Manager
University of Hawai`i Press
2840 Kolowalu Street, Honolulu, HI 96822
tel 808-956-6790; fax 808-988-6052
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/