Ben Waber reviewed A history of Korea by Kyung Moon Hwang (Palgrave essential histories)
A Sprint Through Korean History
4 stars
There's a lot of history to cover here, and Hwang sprints through antiquity before spending more time on eras where we have more historical data. I loved the analysis of the Three Kingdoms period, and the similar patterns one sees in early Japan are unmistakable. There's a lot of time spent on Korea's relationship with its neighbors and later the US, which provides excellent context for the state of the peninsula in the modern era. I do think this book could use a large expansion of the earlier chapters though. Still highly recommend
There's a lot of history to cover here, and Hwang sprints through antiquity before spending more time on eras where we have more historical data. I loved the analysis of the Three Kingdoms period, and the similar patterns one sees in early Japan are unmistakable. There's a lot of time spent on Korea's relationship with its neighbors and later the US, which provides excellent context for the state of the peninsula in the modern era. I do think this book could use a large expansion of the earlier chapters though. Still highly recommend