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The Organization of Korean Historians; Michael D. Shin (edited and translated), co-translated by Edward Park. Everyday life in Joseon-era Korea: Economy and Society (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014); pp.xviii, 296 pages: 51 colour illustrations; bibliography, index. 25 cm. (ISBN 978-9004-261129). Hb. $135.00
How can we fully understand the history of a country if we are only familiar with the achievements of great men and kings? Looking back at the Joseon1 dynasty (1392-1910) there is no shortage of famous (and infamous) historical characters to examine, and a study of their lives and struggles would produce a particularly rich narrative of Korean history. But it might also raise the question of how others lived-especially those non-elites the Marxist historian George Rudé described as 'faces in the crowd'.2 It was to provide the answer to just such a question that the Organization of Korean Historians (Hanguk yeoksa yeonguhoe), a group of politically engaged South Korean academics, first published their How Did People Live in the Joseon Period? in 1996. Their aim was to defamiliarize aspects of traditional Korea that Koreans took for granted by confronting them with a history that was focused not on the court but on the common people. The Organization saw the common people as the true agents of history, and took this as justification for their change of focus. The book proved to be such a hit with the South Korean public that it has gone through more than ten printings
But the concept of defamiliarization is key. It is perhaps easy to become lost in the images of the majesty, beauty, and decorum of the Joseon court-images made more accessible over the past ten years by the large number of popular TV dramas and films devoted to the reigns of kings like Yeongjo (1720-1776) and Jeongjo (1776-1800). One might assume that these images of courtly life represented day-to-day customs, attitudes and speech as they existed on the peninsula, and that the Koreans of today are the direct inheritors of this world. Everyday Life in Joseon-era Korea sets out, as Michael Shin states, to resist this 'impulse to nostalgia, and, by extension, amnesia.' (p. 33). The book's twenty-three chapters confront Korean (and non-Korean) readers with images of...