Pachinko

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Pachinko tells the story of multiple generations of a Korean family in the 20th century. There is somewhat of a rags to riches story as they rise from great poverty in Korea to respectability in Japan. However, it is not quite that simple. Koreans were looked down upon by the Japanese in both Japan and Korea. During the occupation, Koreans were treated poorly at home and at Japan. Afterwards, they were still not treated well. They were not Japanese, even though they lived for decades in Japan. As a young girl, Sunja was impregnated by an older married Korean from Japan (Koh Hansu). She didn't want to be a mistress and took up a pastor's offer to marry her. She moved with him to Japan where he had Korean expatriate family. Koh continued to keep an eye on the family and clandestinely helped them out - but the help often ended up being a faustian bargain with negative things happening. (For example, his son with the woman ran off and did well while posing as a Japanese. Once his family found out, he committed suicide.) The story goes through World War II and includes a family member getting harmed by the atomic bombs. The family builds up businesses, including Pachinko parlors. Some later generations are educated in America. However some of the relationships continue to haunt them. The characters lived through key events in modern Korean history as commoners. The characters have roots in Pyongyang, they live through World War II and the Korean War. However, they do not control the events nor have much active participation. They are just trying to live their lives. 

Two Women Living Together

Two Women Living Together: The Bestselling Korean Memoir by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo

The title describes it well. This is the story of two adult women who live together. They are not romantic partners. They are just friends that care for each other.  They also advocate for better legal protections. Why are rights tied to marriage whether heterosexual or homosexual? What about people that have mutual caring without the romance? There is not a lot of substance to the book, but it does have some interesting thoughts to explore on the different styles of human relationships.

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 16-20

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 16-20 by Pimsleur

There is still a lot of "buying stuff", but it feels this is finally branching out into a little more useful Korean. It would be useful to just go through some general counting rather than have random numbers here and there.

Travel Talk Korean

Travel Talk Korean by Penton Overseas

I recognized some of the Korean here from other Korean language audiobooks. Alas, this one was lacking. There is little time to repeat the phrases. The organization is lacking. Many sections are just "common phrases" again. The voice and tone are both somewhat muted. There are much better 1 hour introductions to Korean out there.

Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese by Zev Handel

For the most part, Chinese characters represent individual things such as objects or actions. In theory this would enable them to be understood across multiple languages. In some sense they can. Japan users Kanji to represent ideas that would be understood by those that know Chinese. Korea and Vietnam had also used Chinese characters for some communication. Ancient Chinese was primarily a literary language that would be used to communicate ideas and not necessarily one spoken by normal people. The pictographs were intelligible, shared ideas. However, they were just part of the language. Everyday speech also has some indication of sounds and grammatical structure. Ancient Chinese was similar to Latin in that it could communicate ideas across languages, but could not display the vernacular spoken language. Modern Chinese has adopted from ancient Chinese to write modern Mandarin. Japanese has incorporated Hirigana (and Katakana) with the characters for Japanese. Vietnamese and Korean have pivoted away from the characters altogether, adopting their own alphabet or a Latin letters for writing. The book has been adapted from an academic work for a general audience and still has some of its academic feel while covering the topic generally.

The Dating Dare: A Novel

The Dating Dare: A Novel by Jayci Lee

Two Korean-Americans meet at a wedding. They fall for each other immediately, but both are reluctant to enter a relationship. They play a "game" where they will go on four dates without falling for each other. He has to go to Paris for a great photography opportunity in a short time, so they know it will only be temporary. Alas, this is a romance, so of course they will end up together. They also discover that they each have similar backgrounds and have been burned in the past. It is lighthearted without getting too spicy, though language is far from clean. For a romance, it is much better than the romatasy slop out there.

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 11-15

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 11-15 by Pimsleur

In the third installment, there is a lot of time spent ordering bottles of wine or cans of beer. These lessons are not particularly useful and are difficult to stick. The numbers are     covered in various times, but just don't seem to stick either. Korean does have a couple numbering systems, making it even more confusing. This is a time where drilling or using audio and video together would be more useful.

K-Drama School: A Pop Culture Inquiry into Why We Love Korean Television

K-Drama School: A Pop Culture Inquiry into Why We Love Korean Television by Grace Jung

When reading this book, I waffled from loving it to not liking it. Overall, I went for the positive. K-Drama is covered extensively, but is almost incidental to the book. korean Drama serves as a framing mechanism for the author to discuss her life and challenges, as well as the experiences of Koreans and Asians. Koreans has had a challenging history with large falls and rapid rises. Japan occupied Korea, kicked out the monarchs and attempted to wipe out Korean identity. Korea achieved freedom at the end of World War II, only to be divided into two. Many travesties occurred in the Korean War. The war was inconclusive (and technical is still ongoing.) South Korea has a large US military base (despite being an ally.) Televisions were introduced to Korea at this time. The dictatorship ruling the country created a television network to help spread propaganda. Television manufacturers created their own network to sell televisions. Korean Drama came out of this setting. The country suffered from many wounds and still had challenges ahead. Korean dramas were created rapidly and at low cost. There were limits on what could be shown (with the producers often hitten the edge of these limits.) Various tropes, such as amnesia were employed. Dramas also focussed on important parts of the Korean psyche. Society is heavily driven to succeed.  We can see both general as well as individual challenges in the dramas.

The author looks at various dramas and discusses how they relate to her experience (which includes various forms of abuse) as well as Korean life (including adoptions.) She has the power to look beyond the immediate problems. Abusers are people who often suffered from abuse earlier in their life. Ending the cycle is important. She suffered significant abuse from her parents. (In one case she received a huge beating from her mom after her mom misunderstood an elementary school teacher.) She suffered greatly and wanted to separate herself from her family. However, she was able to make peace with them. She is critical of woke people who bring people down for behavior they do not respect. This does not help. Instead we are better understanding and helping others to learn. She received many degrees but was turned off from the academic culture. She finally found an area that she enjoyed. 

Korean in 40 Minutes: Learn to speak Korean in minutes with Collins

Korean in 40 Minutes: Learn to speak Korean in minutes with Collins by Collins

This is a quick intro to Korean with short, useful phrases to repeat. This one actually feels a bit too fast to repeat - even at normal speed. 

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 6-10

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 6-10 by Pimsleur

I was getting lost going through these ones. There was a lot of ordering beverages and greetings. It seems more bits would fade than stick. I'll try going through again.

Pimsleur Korean Level 1

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 by Pimsleur

Amazon doesn't have a link to the current full level one, so I linked to an old CD. This has 30 30 minute lessons. You are supposed to do one per day. You can check it out for 21 days at the library. This leads to a small math problem. The content seems ok, but I find it better to check out the individual 5 lessons chunks so that they can actually be finished.

Korean Hangul for Beginners

Korean Hangul for Beginners by Soohee Kim, Haewon Cho and Emily Curtis

Hangul is a logical writing system that combines an intuitive alphabet in a syllabic writing system. The letters are written in a way that relates to the way they are pronounced. They are then combined in blocks with consonants and vowels that make up a syllable. The sounds are almost always the same, though there are some special cases especially at the ends of the words. This workbook provides a good way of learning. It explains the symbols and provides details on how symbols are built upon previous symbols. There is plenty of practice with both writing and hearing the characters. It does require some effort to learn the characters, but just reading the book can provide some background.

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 1-5

Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 1-5 by Pimsleur

This Korean course was a nice length that can be completed in a library checkout. There are other Pimsleur courses that have 30 lessons. This is a problem if you are supposed to do one a day and can only check out for 21 days. It attempts to use a conversational style of learning. However, there is too much English. It becomes "duolingo phrases" with most of the effort being matching English phrases to Korean phrases. They recommend going to the next level once you can respond appropriately to 80% of the prompts. After repeating lessons a few times, I finally just decided to skip ahead. There is no magic here. Luckily it does build on phrase work in future lessons so things are gradually drilled in. 

My First Book of Korean Words: An ABC Rhyming Book of Korean Language and Culture

My First Book of Korean Words: An ABC Rhyming Book of Korean Language and Culture by Henry J. Amen Iv and Kyubyong Park, illustrated by Aya Padrón

This is an "ABC" book of Korean words. The only catch is that the romanization of Korean does not include all the letters. Thus some of the words are English with a Korean translation, such as "F is for flying - nalda". Other words use less popular romanization "G is for gimchi", though most of us would think of it as kimchi. They do have downloads of the words. However, the bulk download did not work properly and the individual words were each in a single file. It did work, but it could be a bit painful. The book was not bad, but kids did not seem too interested.

Learn Korean: 3000 essential words and phrases

Learn Korean: 3000 essential words and phrases by Collins Dictionaries

This audiobook is exactly as described. It went through the 3000 words and phrases, giving the English and then saying the Korean twice with space to repeat. The English words are all British English. I felt I was learning British almost as much as Korean. For modern terms like the "boot" of a car, the Korean word was the American word ("trunk") with a Korean accent. Many of the "older" words (such as months) had some clear Chinese influence. The audiobook does have some logical groups, but doesn't have any progression or context. It may be useful for refreshing vocabulary, but does not really sufficient for learning.

A Guide To Korean Characters: Reading and Writing Hangul and Hanja

A Guide To Korean Characters: Reading and Writing Hangul and Hanja by Bruce K. Grant

I checked this out intending to learn Korean writing. It does cover the writing systems. However, the Korean characters are only in the inside cover. The rest of the book covers Chinese characters. From what I have heard, these Chinese characters are only rarely used in Korea today. I'd rather find a book that focuses on Korean writing.

Spoken World: Korean- one hour intro course

Spoken World: Korean- one hour intro course by Living Language

I had trouble finding any link to this specific one. Even the image of the file from the library shows the 6 disc "complete" course. This one, however, is a 1 hour "short intro". It goes through some quick phrases with chances to repeat. However, it moves at a fairly fast pace, making it hard to really grasp. It does go over a number of key phrases, so maybe a few time going through it would help. It also spends time pitching the "full course" if you really want to learn Korean. At least it is honest in what it provides.

In-flight Korean

In-Flight Korean: Learn Before You Land by Living Language

This is a quick 1 hour course designed to give you some "basics" before going to Korea. It jumps right into some useful phrases. I listened at 1x speed, but still had trouble keeping up. There is a printed section that goes with it that does not seem to be included. I got a little lost when it started jumping to numbers in Chinese - but that didn't quite sound right. Only later was it clear that these are two different flavors of numbers in Korean that are used for different purposes.