Reviews for Naval surgeon in Yi Korea

The average rating for Naval surgeon in Yi Korea based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-17 00:00:00 Justin Henderson Of all the Westerners who passed through Korea after it cautiously (albeit officially) opened its doors in the late 19th century, one would be hard pressed to find a more learned individual with a penchant for detail. Enter 46-year-old U.S. Naval surgeon George W. Woods, a career officer who eventually rose to the highest medical rank the Navy bestows. Woods kept an impeccable journal of his several month stay in and around Seoul in 1884 while serving aboard the USS Juniata. What makes the annotated transcription of Woods' journal so significant, apart from his prosaic depictions of Korean life, is that his sojourn occurred before notable missionaries like Henry Appenzeller, Horace Newton Allen, and Horace Grant Underwood arrived and established themselves. In fact, Woods arrived less than a year after Lucious Foote, the American envoy, took up official residence in Seoul. Few others can claim such a distinction. The old adage "don't judge a book by its cover" is especially accurate here. The cover of this 1984 publication is admittedly atrocious but the over twenty full page photograph reproductions admirably complement Woods' accessibly detailed and optimistically objective account. A lot of the characteristic air of superiority that was common of the time is refreshingly absent. We are quite fortunate that the editors, Bohm and Swartout, preserved and compiled this historically significant journal. If you can still find a copy, it's worth the trouble.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-16 00:00:00 Lawrence Leppert Isabella Bird was an Englishwoman who had the wealth and the time to travel the world. Among the places she visited war Korea during the late Joseon dynasty, and here in this book, Korea and Her Neighbours, she records her travels over several visits to the country. Writing from a position of privilege, sometimes Bird's commentary is appallingly racist. But other of her more objective accounts of what is occurring around her is eye-opening, and useful history. For instance, we learn from the book that the women of Seoul were not permitted to come out to do their work, which mainly consisted of shopping and washing until the evening, a period when only they could be out and men had to be indoors, and then the women would have to return at midnight. Women, therefore, we learn, were mainly confined to their homes for most of the day. As one woman told Bird, she had never seen Seoul in the daylight. Another interesting account concerns the lives of ordinary people. She writes of how the mass of Korean people, inside and outside the cities, have learned to live on very little in the way of food and are able to pass their time with simple entertainment in the form of songs and games. They have to do this by necessity, she tells us, because the yangban, the upper crust of society, will extort money from them if they inherit or earn money or property. So the common person often took to hiding any new money or possessions should he come into it, and found a way to work more lethargically so as not to produce too much for his masters. Bird's book is not perfect by any means and perhaps you might find it a bit repetitive and mostly not fun. Still, it's a good book to skim for general information for what life was like in Korea as Korea was just coming into the 20th century.