Brief Encounters: Early Reports of Korea by Westerners

Brief Encounters: Early Reports of Korea by Westerners
ISBN-10
1624120814
ISBN-13
9781624120817
Series
Brief Encounters
Category
History
Pages
360
Language
English
Published
2016-12-02
Publisher
Seoul Selection
Authors
Brother Anthony of Taizé, Robert D. Neff

Description

This anthology is a compilation of Westerners’ accounts of their visits to Korea, originally published in books or newspapers before the country opened its doors in the late nineteenth century. The opening of Korea made it possible to explore the country in detail and write detailed accounts. Prior impressions were garnered mostly from brief visits to remote islands along the coast. The accounts published here are mainly anecdotal, and contain many generalizations. However, the accumulated impressions of these early encounters surely influenced the perspectives of later travelers, and help explain the overwhelmingly negative image of Korea that Western governments harbored at the time. The book can serve as a useful resource for studying Korea’s early interactions with the outside world, and will give readers an idea of the criteria by which Westerners judged the foreign “other.”

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