By Keith Pratt
There are starkly varied Koreas which are both vital actors on today’s stressful geopolitical level: South Korea, that is thriving as a democracy racing into the long run as a high-tech monetary powerhouse, and North Korea, a repressive dictatorship governed through the iron tendencies of the valuable chief. The dividing thirty eighth Parallel is a chilly battle relic that mask the deep and binding cultural ties among them, and Keith Pratt tackles right here in Everlasting Flower the complexly intertwined background of the 2 nations.
Everlasting Flower traverses the traditional actual and cultural panorama of the Koreas, spanning from the traditional states of outdated Choson and Wiman Choson to the current day. Pratt finds the wealthy origins of such cultural foundations as non secular practices and foods and drinks, and he connects them to key ancient advancements of either countries. He additionally probes arguable old occasions resembling the abuses—torture, punishment, and the “comfort women”—of the japanese profession. Concise and richly illustrated pictorial essays increase Pratt’s compelling narrative, chronicling quite a few monuments of Korea’s prior, together with the world’s oldest observatory and the well-known turtle boats.
An engrossing and provocative background of the 2 Koreas, Everlasting Flower is an important research of 2 international locations which are speedily rising from the shadows in their looming neighbors—China and Japan—and of one another in addition. because the Korean peninsula turns into an more and more very important geopolitical hotspot, Everlasting Flower deals a large viewpoint in this painfully divided state. (20060801)
