Korea Old and New: A History Book

This is "the textbook" of Korean history used in American colleges. It tries to be as objective as possible so that it can detach itself from ideological fights between nationalist-leftists and nationalist-conserves. But the outcome is EXTREMELY DRY. It does not give a nice readable narrative with punctuations, and leaves the reader wondering "so what was important?" The best alternatives available for "modern" Korean history are: Bruce Cumings' Korea's Place in the Sun and Michael Robinson's Korea's Twentieth Century Odyssey. The former challenges the reader with many important historical questions. The problem is that Cumings devotes sooo much space for 1945-1953 history (about 100 pages), which I think is too detailed as an introduction to a survey history. It might also be a little confusing in terms of chronological narrative. Robinson's coverage is shorter and with more elaboration on colonial society than Cumings's. Since I study colonialism I am biased for him, but it has a much more readable narrative that gives a sense of what it would have felt like if you had lived in that period.