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{ Monthly Archives } June 2006

The July Asian History Carnival

The next Asian History Carnival will be hosted at the World History Blog. It will be hosted on July 7th, so get your postings to Miland Brown before then, by emailing miland[at]usa2014[dot]com.

2006 06 30 Muninn History
Links Comments (0)

国粋 and 국수

I’m giving a presentation to my Korean class related to nationalism, and wanted to explain one translation of the word that is particularly strong and usually has a negative connotation: 국수주의(國粹主義). I want to explain the word by discussing its parts, especially the character 수(粹) which can be roughly translated as “essence.” For reference, I [...]

2006 06 19 Muninn Japan
Korea
Language Comments (3)

Gutenberg’s Distributed Proofreaders

Before there was Google Books there was Project Gutenberg. In fact, the Gutenberg project hasn’t disappeared and I think it is as important as ever. I have already blogged about my frustrations with Google Books and I can only hope that some of the concerns I discussed will be resolved in the future. In the [...]

2006 06 17 Muninn Open Access Comments (1)

Timothy Burke on the Rentiers of Sovereignty

Timothy Burke is an excellent historian and writer whose postings always deserve a close reading. I recommend that everyone read some of his comments on sovereignty in his posting Rentiers of Sovereignty Angola is the kind of situation that made me think very differently about sovereignty, and about the kinds of politics, both conservative and [...]

2006 06 17 Muninn Links
Nationalism Comments (0)

Michael Breen’s Orientalism: Part II

I am beginning to see a pattern in the opinion columns of Michael Breen. I talked a little bit about his problematic portrayal of Koreans in a previous posting. In today’s Friday issue of the Korea Times, in a warm and fuzzy column entitled, “Why Streets of Seoul Are Safe” he tells us why he [...]

2006 06 16 Muninn Korea Comments (2)

Karaoke to Noraebang?

I mentioned some interesting anecdotes my favorite teacher told us in class recently in my last posting. Another thing she brought up was what she saw as a huge change in Korea’s singing culture. As with previous and future postings from my time here in Korea, I must apologize if I write anything which is [...]

2006 06 15 Muninn Korea Comments (4)

Korean Student Protest Culture: A Few Stories

We have three different teachers teaching my class Korean each week and each have their designated days. With the right encouragement, one of my teachers loves to tell us stories about her stormy university life in the 1980s and make observations about Korean society. From a strict pedagogical standpoint one might make objections to her [...]

2006 06 15 Muninn Korea Comments (2)

My Class

I’m really happy with my class here, fourteen of us in all. They are almost all very young students in or fresh out of college but they are fun group. We have one Indonesian, married to a Dutchman and studying art, French and Korean at various universities to avoid the “boring” women’s expat organizations. There [...]

2006 06 15 Muninn Korea
Personal Comments (1)

Kimchi Sundubu

In my humble opinion, one of the most delicious dishes on the planet is kimchi sundubu. Sundubu, a spicy tofu soup-like dish comes in many varieties but since I’m not a big fan of seafood, I prefer it when it is served without clams or other seafood in it. I have found that restaurants offering [...]

2006 06 15 Muninn Korea Comments (0)

Soccer Game

I was just about to go to bed when suddenly the entire neighborhood erupted with wild cheering. The sounds of joyous voices poured in through the window from all around. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “It must be the world cup and Korea has just scored.” But wait a second, haven’t all the newspapers been [...]

2006 06 12 Muninn Current Events
Japan
Korea Comments (1)