A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present

by Michael J. Seth

In this comprehensive yet compact book, Michael J. Seth surveys Korean history from Neolithic times to the present. He explores the origins and development of Korean society, politics, and its still little-known cultural heritage from their inception to the two Korean states of today. Telling the remarkable story of the origins and evolution of a society that borrowed and adopted from abroad, Seth describes how various tribal peoples in the peninsula came together to form one of the world's most distinctive communities. He shows how this ancient, culturally and ethnically homogeneous society was wrenched into the world of late-nineteenth-century imperialism, fell victim to Japanese expansionism, and then became arbitrarily divided into two opposed halves, North and South, after World War II. Tracing the past seven decades, the book explains how the two Koreas, with their deeply different political and social systems and geopolitical orientations, evolved into sharply contra

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Asia

552 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2010

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

My younger sisters were both adopted from Korea, and my parents have always celebrated their heritage; I grew up eating bulgogi and japchae, visiting Korean cultural events, and watching my sisters become interested in the pop culture offerings (movies, music, etc) of Korea. But it wasn't until visiting my sister, who's in grad school there, in June 2014, that I really grew interested in learning more about the history of this beautiful, dynamic, and culturally rich country. We spent two weeks touring Seoul, Busan, Gyeongju, and Jeju Island, including visiting several museums that helped to spark my curiosity about Korea in prehistoric times, during the "Three Kingdoms" period, on through the Choson dynasty, colonialism, and into the modern era. When I returned home I resolved to get a book covering the entire scope, and based on reviews decided on A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present by Michael J. Seth.

This book is dense, as is often the case with sweeping histories of a country or region. It throws a lot of names, places, and dates at you, often in rapid-fire succession. It also suffers from the obvious issue of often having to skim over lengthy periods in Korea's history as it attempts to fit 3,500+ years into just over 500 tightly-packed pages. Still, it's not hard to read and manages to delve into surprising detail when hitting the "highlights" of the country's history (or countries', in the case of the years after the Korean war). The history fattens and lengthens out as we reach the modern era--not surprising, as a vast amount more documentation was created and has survived since the country began to modernize--but even the sections on prehistory and the earliest known kingdoms contain a surprising amount of detail, referencing both existing historical documents and also prevailing theories from various historians.

The book takes the reader from the hunter-gatherer era all the way through 2010, leaving off just before the death of Kim Jong-Il and the appointment of his son Kim Jong-Un as head of state. It does an excellent job of explaining Korean culture and how it's managed to stay distinct even while being heavily influenced by China (Confucianism in particular). Korea is far, far more than "China light" and the Korean people have held on to their traditions and the unique aspects of their country and people even while being taken over by Japan, cut in half by the United States and the USSR, and forced to modernize at a speed unprecedented in history.

If you're looking for a light, fast read, this is likely not the book for you. However, if you're looking to establish a solid grounding in Korean history without slogging through a dozen books, this is the right place to go. Michael J. Seth's done a fantastic job of hitting the highlights, diving in for detail at places, while never losing sight of his overarching themes about Korean culture and mindset. The book is a captivating portrait of a fascinating people, and I recommend it thoroughly.

[S.Baqer Al-Meshqab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally done with this book. It took me more than 4 months but it was really fun and informative. A bit heavy sometimes especially parts related to economics (not my cup of tea). The writing style is good enough and the book covers most of Korean history in great detail.

[Vanessa M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good comprehensive volume about Korea's history and civilization.

[Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The information contained in this book is sound and if you read it from cover to cover you’ll have a pretty good idea of Korea’s interesting journey. My main complaint with this text is the way they handle non-English terms. There are lots of Korean words but also Japanese and Chinese terms and names scattered throughout. For Korean the author used the old romanization system which is much less intuitive in my opinion. Many students of history are also students of foreign languages and it would be nice to have the native language spelling available in parenthesis or at the very least as a footnote for further investigation through a dictionary or article. There were many terms and names mentioned during the Three Kingdoms Period (삼국시대), for example, that I would have liked to look into further but couldn’t because I wasn’t sure of the correct Korean spelling.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched, however, half of the book was devoted to modern history (last 150 years of history or so) and I would have love to read more about the three kingdoms, Goryeo and Joseon.

I was not familiar with the romanisation of the Korean words and I would appreciated if the author had added the hangeul.

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

With no background in Korean History apart from KDramas and Wikipedia, I can't judge the content of this book on accuracy etc. I'm pretty happy with the coverage.

My gripes are with the editing (loads of uncorrected errors, particularly in the first half of the book) and with the repetitive nature of the layout. The reality is, I'm reading the book because I'm interested in the content. I'm not expecting a thesis-quality experience. Therefore, I do not need you to restate the thing you said in the previous paragraph, or indeed in the previous page. The format was very much a "statement, explanation, conclusion" scenario, and it just reminded me of high school when I was trying to reach a word-count goal. At least a third of this book could have been cut without losing any value. Final gripe is with the chosen romanisation. I've never seen the form used before and I felt it really interrupted the flow of my reading. If I was going to have to stop for every Korean word anyway, I would have preferred it to just be in Hangul.

However, I did like the approach in the sense that it dealt with Korea as a whole up until the split, then approached each of the two states in their own chapters for certain chunks of time. Each chapter ended with a segment on how Korea compared to the rest of the world in the same time period, which was good, but seldom contained information not already provided. If you want the Cliff's Notes, you could perhaps try just reading the last segment of each chapter?

All in all, I got what I wanted, which was a locally available, comprehensive Korean history that got me up to speed on the basics. Warning, font is tiny, book is big. :/

[Brian Bigelow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a necessary book for beginning to understand the Korean people to any extent.

[Rob Western · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going over 2000 years of history is a tall order for any book, and Seth does a dry reasonable job of it. For anyone interested in Korea pre-1600, the book offers only a brief glance. Most of the book covers the last 150 years.

My only complaint is that Seth, especially in the last two chapters, bombards the reader with trivia. The trivia lacks any real analysis, which is certainly not how earlier chapters read. It makes the last two chapters very dry, and really not especially useful.

The rest of the book is amazing and I thoroughly recommend it.

[Pat Voigt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long, but well written history of Korea.

[Gretel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you can see, I haven't finished the book. I only needed the chapter on occupied Korea for my MA thesis and because I have to read what feels like a million books I skipped the rest. But from what I read I really like the book. Of course, writing a HISTORY of Korea means the author has to skip certain aspects and simplify. Nonetheless, he did a great job of condensing a complicated subject and showed who was involved in the colonisation of Korea and in which ways, making it clear that many, even Koreans, took part in putting Korea in that bad position.
Occupied Korea is a very difficult topic to talk about but Seth's chapter served as a great introduction, covering several aspects, such as: politics, history, culture, education, economy, ideology, and more.

I think the only real criticism - I don't count missing in-depth discussion because you just can't shove everything into a book which encompasses many hundred years of history - is lacking information regarding the West's fault in the formation of occupied Korea (it is present but not elaborated enough, which has probably to do with the aim of the book). What Japan did was wrong and the commited crimes are indisputable but the West granted them free hand over a sovereign nation. Especially the USA and Britain were totally okay with it, probably because of the evil Communists and the colonial ideology rampant in the West. Hopefully I can find a book on the West's shitty handling of the situation.

[Michelle Pinto · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you aren't required to read this book for class then don't read. However, if you are a history fanatic then this book would be interesting to you. One thing that I dislike is how the author romanized the Korean names and words. Since I can read Korean, I would have preferred the author using hangul.

[Diocletian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book on Korean history for people who don't know much (or anything) about it.