This work is a translation of a 1996 Korean history book intended for general readers and designed to answer some of the questions that people had about life in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). It covers an impressive range of topics related to economy and society, such as farming, lives of the peasants, taxes, merchants, salt production, population growth, the lowborn class, divorce, the penal system, the eating culture, and the outhouses at the royal palace. These sorts of volumes are in quite high demand among Korean readers, and there have been a goodly number of volumes published over the past fifteen years to satiate this appetite for more specific knowledge on life in past times. Beyond that market niche, the works are generally easy to read and informative.

For those of us teaching premodern Korean history or culture at Western institutions, the question of how to incorporate daily life history (saenghwalsa) into our lectures is highly important. Students want to know much more than dates, names, and the major events, and the popularity of Korean historical dramas has caused students to wonder if what they are watching is actually the reality of past times in Korea. In this regard, a volume such as this one can fill a very important need in the classroom, especially for larger undergraduate courses not aimed at students with fluency in Korean.

Yet, at first glance, I feared that this volume would not be very useful. Translations of Korean academic works into English generally fall flat. This is not due to the translations necessarily, but rather the aim of the original work. Korean readers have a lot more background knowledge than would a reader in the West who is not a Koreanist. Thus the translations are oftentimes far too dense for students and need much explanation and supplementation by the instructor to bring about understanding.

This volume, however, proved to be different. I found the prose very readable and the content of most of the chapters—twenty-three in all—to be quite easily digested. Editor Michael Shin also provided a short introduction to each chapter that helps contextualize the translation that follows. The chapters on farming and aspects of the peasantry's lives are very good and will fit nicely into discussions of agrarian life in Chosŏn. Often overlooked lives—such as those of miners, itinerant merchants, and the lowborn—now can be better addressed with the short and informative chapters in this volume. Questions that students often have—say, those concerning divorce, life in the military, or the penal system—can now be answered through the chapters in this volume. And who would not want to read about the outhouses at the royal palaces? That will certainly put a new spin on the stately lives of the monarchs of Chosŏn. These are great additions to the materials we have available in English and will help give a fuller picture of life in Chosŏn Korea.

I do have some quibbles with the volume. First, the Romanization follows the horrid “new” system rather than the more standard McCune-Reischauer system found in most Western academic publications. Thus we are treated to Mr. Gim, Mr. Bak, and the Joseon dynasty, and this will undoubtedly cause confusion among some readers. I really do not understand why this change is being forced upon scholars working in the West: the new system does not aid readability a bit and now is in the process of creating a double lexicon for common terms and names.

Second, the translators did not bother to translate book titles for the most part. Even the glossary simply describes books; for example, Chibong yusŏl [Topical discourses by Chibong] is simply said to be a book by Yi Sugwang. For a history volume, this seems a fairly large oversight or shortcut. There are also a number of spots in the volume where a series of Korean terms are not translated (e.g., pp. 160, 174–75).

Finally, I wonder why the translators decided to describe nobi as “unfree” people. While I know this might be a sore point for scholars in Korea or Koreans in general, the fact of the matter is that people who are owned by others and are not free are slaves. No amount of tiptoeing around the fact changes what they were, and we should present things as straightforwardly as possible to our students.

One final comment concerns the price of the volume. I hope the publisher will issue a paper version of the book, as the price tag is probably too much to expect students to pay for supplementary material.

My complaints notwithstanding, I still believe this a fine work with great possibilities in the classroom. The various chapters answer all sorts of questions about everyday life and what things might have been like in Chosŏn Korea. I know that I will certainly add this volume to my history classes and am sure my students will enjoy the insight it provides.