Between Dreams and Reality: The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600-1894

by Eugene Y. Park

From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Korean men from all walks of life trained in the arts of war to prepare not for actual combat but to sit for the state military examination ( mukwa ). Despite this widespread interest, only for a small minority did passing the test lead to appointment as a military official. Why, then, did so many men aspire to the mukwa ? Eugene Y. Park argues that the mukwa was not only the state's...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674025024
• ISBN13: 9780674025028
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.2"