Category: hst259

I treated the first few weekly reflections as a true reflection into what happened in the class.  It was really a mix of Korean History material and learning tools that we needed to have to be a successful historian.  This made a true reflection on what we learned in class a little harder and I felt like I personally focused on the skills we learned and if we needed a whole class session on what we focused on.  For example, week 4 we learned how to check sources, and for me, a college sophomore who took AP english classes in highschool, I felt like this was a waste because it was a skill that I had already worked on in the past; sure, extra practice is always helpful but 4 weeks in felt a little too late.  Week 3 we planned the course material which was something totally new to me, as every class I’ve ever taken, I had no say into what was taught.  So I used this reflection as a tool to really discuss how I felt about this and my feelings moving forward.  Week 2 was used purely as a review of the class period, because I still wasn’t sure what to expect from class or myself, so I was still trying to take baby steps in the development of my reflections.  FInally, Week 1 was rough because I was confused about what exactly we had to do and I wasn’t sure what was sufficient enough, so I used my peers’ posts as an example and a guide to move forward.  Week 1 set up the standard to how I felt the reflections should be used.  In terms of historical skills, there’s a huge emphasis on questioning everything.  As a historian, nothing can be set in stone.  You have to approach everything as a mystery and try and piece together what’s actually happening based around the accounts you have.  One account will never be good enough either because there is the possibility of subjectivity and bias being put into an account.  An example of this would be a diary; although it provides an up close encounter with the event, it would be filled with personal opinions and biases that couldn’t be accounted for.  The skill of a historian would be collecting enough of these opinions to form an educated account using enough personal stories that would be able to be backed up with facts of the time period.  Connecting this to the topics I’m interested in, I think that I need to analyze the Edo period in Japan and Korea very closely.  I need to be careful in the collection of topics, making sure they’re from credible sources, and if they’re personal accounts I need to make sure I can find academic research that could enforce the ideas I’m finding in the account with solid facts.  I’ve found the tools that a historian uses very interesting.  As a biochemistry major who aims to enter the research world I understand how important credibility is and how vital it is to be able to back up what your claim is.  I think it is very interesting to look through a different academic field and understand how they work; for me, it shows how similar these academic fields can be in a broad sense

This week we focus on the Korean War. This was an extremely interesting week for me because, growing up in America, I learned about how the Korean war from the American perspective. The American perspective makes this war absolutely necessary in order to combat the spread of communism in the world and is a major marker in the Cold War. However, learning from the Korean side, we can see how exactly the war effected the pawns used by the US and the USSR. I read a short story called the Crane which focused on two childhood friends reunited on opposite sides of the war, one as the prisoner, the other as the police escort. Eventually the escort frees the prisoner after remembering the memories that they had together. The story showed how bonds between people are stronger than war and really exemplified how the Korean people were effected by the war. They were forced to choose sides and fight against each other while being endorsed by the two global powers at the time.

This week, we focused on the fall of the Choson dynasty and the lead up to Japanese colonization. We focused on an excerpt from the dutch explorer Hamel’s journal. Hamel was on an expedition to Taiwan when a storm took him to Korea, making him the first European to visit and take records of the Korean peninsula. He was captured and treated relatively poorly. I thought it was a very interesting look into the Korean world from an outsider’s perspective. It was the first time in the class that we had seen what Korea looked like to an outsider from another part of the world. The treatment of the outsider was extremely interesting as well because I had developed the idea that Koreans really tried to adopt Confucian and Buddhist ideals into their society so I found it ironic that Hamel and his crew were treated so maliciously in a society that attempts to adopt such peaceful ideals. Another thing that I found interesting in the reading that I went into more detail in my discussion was how Hamel compared the Koreans to the Chinese and Japanese using their cultures as a frame of reference to understand the Korean culture.

After careful consideration; I am finalizing my initial idea to do an in depth look into the relations of Japan and Korea over the course of History up to the early-mid 1900s.  I think that my overarching question in this project is going to focus around how the entirety of the past from the earliest documents I found helped to shape the relations we see today.  Naturally, I will have to give a brief summary of the state the countries have been in since the time period I decided to stop and then go to the earliest document I found and move in chronological order.  I have always been a fan of powerpoint presentation so I think that following this format would be effective as I focus on the good and the bad that Japan and Korea have experienced over the years. Another format I might want to experiment with if I have the inspiration and help might be an open source website that you showed us earlier in the year; the categorical divide I picture in my project might translate well into a type of website, but we will see.  Some points I want the reader to take away from my project is the focus on the intricacies of international relations and that they aren’t as black and white as we are taught to believe as well as some general and interesting facts about how Japan and Korea interacted with each other over the years. I don’t plan on making this project too intense or serious because that’s not how I like to present information; I like being relaxed and loose, so that’s how I want my project to come off to others, a simple and fun exploration into the history of Korea and Japan’s international relations.

Sorry for the lack of reflections but March has been pretty hectic with all the pandemic stuff going on but I’ve hopefully gotten back on track! We talked about the imjin war on Friday which was perfect timing in my opinion because I plan on doing my project on Japanese Korean relations. I read the first section which provided a very interesting first person diary account of a war prisoner and showed the Japanese treatment of the Koreans during their invasion; this could be proven useful in my project. I also gathered a few resources for my project and I think with the 6 I found as a foundation I’m excited to take people through a tour of the history of these two nation’s relations! I think I’m just going to do a powerpoint focusing on the good and the bad between the two countries as an attempt to show that relations aren’t black and white as textbooks make it seem. A lot of the time in my experience I feel like nations are either friends or enemies but I found that in my initial research, the same time the Koreans ranked 1500s Japan as “barbaric” they continued to import books to the country so could they really be as deadly enemies or friendly friends that I initially believed?

I would like to do my project focusing around Korean and Japanese relations.  I think this topic is really broad and definitely has a lot to look into; as I begin researching and digging further, I think it’ll be easier to zero in on what time period I would like to do but off the bat I would want to look into the Edo period of Japan and how they interact with Korea and vise versa.  For me personally, I’ve always been interested in Japanese culture especially during the Edo period when Samurai and Shogun were present, so I think it would be interesting to see how outsiders in East Asia communicated and thought of the society at the time. As for what in the course drove me to lead to this, the Imjin war is a big one as it was right before the Edo period began.  So not only would I research an outside look of the culture, I would see the opinions of a culture that just warred with Japan for six years. Another thing aided in my decision was the day we spent in the library learning how to research topics and I got to do a quick dip into all the information and see what there was to find; I found a good amount of resources and feel confident that I can make a sufficient project out of what I had found!

This sucks.  I hate having to be home.  I feel like this adjustment affects science and art majors the most.  A third of my work for both organic chemistry and biochemistry relied on in person labs which take away easy points for me.  I also utilize all academic resources for these classes; tutors, learning assistant workshops, weekly office hours, all in person resources that don’t care over well with the technology change.The only thing that is positive is the pass fail option that was finally announced today.  Although this isn’t ideal, I feel like this is the most fair thing the school could do to compensate for what’s happening, it’s nice to know when I apply to graduate schools and they ask about the pass fail classes on my transcript I can remind them of the Corona pandemic of 2020 in case they forget.  But overall, this sucks. I’m the type of worker who needs to be secluded in a room with no windows where I can throw my phone on the opposite side and walk around while working. To work from home at my old desk from high school right next to my bed with all my guitars and my tv is way too much of a distraction and makes it very hard to focus on my work.  It’s similar to high school but the difference is in high school if I got distracted it didn’t really matter cause high school was easy. Working out sucks too because all the gyms are close so I’m forced to do bodyweight prison workouts in my basement instead of lifting weight; my eating habits are also terrible now because I can’t get my three turkey burgers, rice, and brocelli like I’m used to.  I don’t really miss the social aspect of college though because I’ve always considered myself to be introverted so being home and alone all the time is an awesome recharge period for me and an opportunity to catch up shows I’m behind in, play my guitar, and play video games. The only good that’s coming out of this is my music theory on guitar has the opportunity to grow and I’m getting nasty at Call of Duty—I might go pro, who knows.

This week was an interesting one; Wednesday was a left turn from Korean History to discuss the prices of textbooks and a new open textbook model that the library is interested in. Overall I enjoyed this, it was informative to learn about how we can actually save money in college and it made me feel better as a student that people are out there working on making the college prices better for us. I knew about the open style though because I am currently in Calculus I and that class utilizes the open textbook style. Friday was a return to the route of Korean with another great lecture about Korean relations with the Tang Dynasty. I thought it was interesting diving into the way the Tang Dynasty viewed the rest of Eastern Asia in terms of how well they mimicked China as well as how clever the Koreans were when sending ambassadors to different locations; like how they would send people without the surname Ko to Tang to show that they have moved on from the days of the Koguryo kingdom.

Sadly, I came down with a cold that forced me to miss class on Friday so I missed out on what we did that day, but as for Wednesday it was by far my favorite session so far. It opened with a structured lecture/discussion on general Buddhism, which is one of my favorite topics to discuss because I find Buddhist beliefs extremely interesting due my lack of education in the topic until coming to college being raised in a Catholic household. We then broke into groups to search through the primary sources we had to read prior to fill out a chart on the three kingdoms and their relations to Buddhism; how it was introduced, how it was used by the society, and how it was spread to other areas in Asia (just a few examples). I found this to be my favorite way to work through our material for that day. The opening lecture was informative and a good way to get a general idea of Buddhism then searching through the primary sources really helped me get a deeper understanding of Buddhism in Korea while still being engaging by working in a group. My enjoyment of this session made it hard to miss on Friday, but sadly that was the worst day of my cold and I was bedridden for most of the day, but I’m excited to be back and for another great week!

This week we headed to the library to learn about primary sources and digging through the literature to find proper source to use in terms of a project or a paper. To be completely honest, this was very monotonous. If I was a freshman who hadn’t taken any classes were writing was involved yet it might’ve been helpful, but even then, I learned how to find proper sources my senior year of high school in AP Literature. Although the article about Korean nationalism and how it effected the 2004 Chinese declaration that Goguryeo was part of China was very interesting, the whole assignment felt very repetitive and unnecessary; as a second semester sophomore, this was my 3rd time going to the library to learn how to find and use proper sources as well as the research library on the Trexler website. Friday’s class was a little confusing as to what was being discussed exactly; I wasn’t sure if it was about pronunciation in Korean or the reading we had before on the Iron Age in Korea. Moving forward, I think that a more structured lecture style would help me understand the material a lot better than I currently do, as well as create a more expansive weekly response.