Works in English on the Imjin War and the Challenge of Research
Journal Title: International Journal of Korean History - Year 2013, Vol 18, Issue 2
Abstract
The Imjin War has been a popular topic of research in Korea, Japan and China. To date, hundreds of books and thousands of journal articles and book chapters have been written on this international conflict. In contrast, the overall number of works in English remains miniscule. In this article, Hur introduces a list of major English-language books and articles on the Imjin War and proceeds to offer critical comments on the most representative works to date -- Samuel Hawley’s The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China and Kenneth Swope’s A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592-1598. In order to further illustrate a range of limits and problems found in these two books, Hur takes up some key issues pertaining to truce negotiations in the Imjin War and reviews how these are treated by Hawley and Swope, respectively. Hur points out that the two books contain countless factual errors and a flood of false data, all stemming from the quality of the sources upon which they relied. As a result, their analyses are fatally flawed or skewed. Given that primary sources on the Imjin War are plentiful and that they come in different languages, Hur suggests that it would be a challenge to establish a firm base of empirical data, but that, without accomplishing this fundamental task, it would be impossible to produce a high-quality analysis of the Imjin War.
Authors and Affiliations
Nam-lin Hur
Keywords
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