[KS] Choson Dynasty Sexuality

[sumnom at u.washington.edu]

Hanguk ui ch'unhwa has been through several editions since it first came out in the 1990s. I have not seen all the editions but one hopes that there has been some improvement. What were some of the editorial problems you noticed?


On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Frank Hoffmann wrote:

>> But if you wish to contemplate the notion, look carefully at the painting of 
>> the two cats, one of them up in the tree.  Believe it or not, that's an 
>> "erotic" painting.
>
> Well, have some real cats in your house, and you will notice very quickly they 
> are up to only one thing -);  Pleasure.
>
> From the 1990s on, with the democratization of South Korea, a huge bulk of 
> literature on various aspects of sexuality in culture was published. The very 
> large majority of works I saw here and there are of pretty poor quality, mostly 
> very populist writings. The _Han'guk ui ch'unhwa_ book that Joshua Van Lieu 
> mentioned here is actually one example for such publication -- badly edited. No 
> wonder then that all the antiquarian booksellers along the P'yonghwa Market 
> display the book with the back cover up, not the front cover -- but still have 
> it on display.
> Psychology has just been as underdeveloped in Korean academia as art history. 
> And without these two, I wonder how much the field of literature can produce on 
> such topics, without an environment that has fosters such studies.
>
> Frank
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> -- 
> --------------------------------------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreaweb.ws
>
>