We picked most essential Korean phrases you need to know while traveling or living in Korea, and divided them into 20 different situations, which comes with detailed explanations about the phrase itself AND fun and useful information about the situation where the phrases are used in.

어서 와, 한국 대학생활은 처음이지? Welcome! Is it your first time at a Korean university? √ 네덜란드 교환학생 3인방이 쓴 실전 한국어 가이드 √ 유학생, 교환학생들에게 필수적인 한국어 표현만 골라 쉽고 빠르게! √ 한 손에 들어오는 포켓 사이즈로 간편하게 휴대 가능 √ A practical Korean language textbook written by three exchange students from the Netherlands √ An easy, friendly guide on essential Korean idioms and expressions for international and exchange students √ A portable pocket-sized book 는 유럽에서 유일하게 한국학과가 있는 네덜란드 레이덴대학교에서 온 교환학생 3인방이 쓴 실전 한국어 교재다. 부제인 ‘Your Friendly Guide to Student Life in Korea’에 걸맞게, 일상 생활 및 캠퍼스에서 자주 쓰이는 단어, 표현과 더불어 직접 경험한 한국 살이의 이모저모를 친한 친구에게 들려주듯 재미있게 풀었다. 레이덴대학교 한국학과에 다니는 라우른, 아이린, 레이첼은 연세대학교 교환학생이 되면서 한국 생활의 매력에 흠뻑 빠져든다. 축제와 MT, 동아리를 종횡무진 누비며 신나게 놀기도 하고, 치열한 수강신청 경쟁을 뚫는가 하면, 식당에서 “이모님”을 외치며 주문하는 것에도 익숙해진다. 물론, 문화 차이로 난감한 상황도 겪었다. 식당에서 벨을 누르면 종업원이 온다는 사실을 모른 채 무작정 기다리거나, 윗사람과 술을 마실 때는 고개를 돌린 채 잔을 비워야 한다는 예절을 몰랐을 때처럼 말이다. 이렇게 한국에서 좌충우돌 시행착오를 겪으며 배운, 말 그대로 “서바이벌” 한국어와 한국문화를 상황별로 정리해 8개의 챕터로 구성했다. 두루 쓰이는 생활 필수 표현에서부터 학교 수업, 자취방 구하기, 길 찾기, 식당에서 주문하기, 여가 생활, 쇼핑, 응급상황에 이르기까지, 한국에 처음 온 외국 학생들이 겪게 되는 거의 모든 상황을 다루며 꼭 필요한 단어와 표현을 제시한다. 올해 초 막 교환학생을 마치고 고향으로 돌아간 저자들의 따끈따끈한 경험을 바탕으로, 한국에 온 외국인이 어떤 점을 어려워하는지, 어떤 표현을 헷갈려 하는지를 콕콕 짚어내 ‘꿀팁’을 전수한다. 한국 유학을 계획하고 있거나 지금 한국에서 친절한 멘토를 찾고 있는 유학생이라면, 먼저 한국을 거쳐간 세 사람의 조언이 좋은 길잡이가 될 것이다. Survival Korean Crash Course is a practical Korean language guide written by three exchange students from Leiden University in the Netherlands, which runs the only Korean Studies major in Europe. As “Your Friendly Guide to Student Life in Korea,” the book is a friendly, fun read, like the writers are personally sharing their stories of life in Korea to a good friend. The book also contains frequently used Korean words and idioms. The three writers—Irene Schokker, Lauren Kies, and Rachel van den Berg—fell in love with life in Korea as exchange students at Yonsei University, where they met Korean friends, hung out at university festivals and student outings, joined student clubs and activities, and even raced against Koreans students in the fierce competition to register for classes. They went through difficulties too, as they got used to the cultural differences. Before they learned to call out “Auntie!” at a restaurant or ring a bell on the table, they would wait ages for a server to finally come take their order. And they had no idea that, according to Korean drinking customs, they should have turned their heads away when drinking with their seniors. Based on their own newbie mistakes and confusion, they put together this Survival Korean manual, featuring eight chapters organized by situation. The book lays out essential words and expressions commonly used in daily life and various situations that international students in Korea often encounter, including school classes, searching for a place to live, navigating the streets, ordering food at a restaurant, enjoying leisure time, shopping, and emergencies. Based on the first-hand experiences of the authors themselves, who have just finished their exchange semester and returned to the Netherlands earlier this year, the three students pass on their tips for the things foreigners living in Korea find difficult and the Korean expressions they find confusing. This book will be a useful guide for students who plan to study in Korea or are looking for a mentor on Korean life, with authentic advice and recommendations from real exchange students.

A handy Korean phrasebook and guide to the Korean language, Survival Korean contains basic vocabulary necessary for getting around Korea. This book contains all the necessary words and phrases for speaking Korean in any kind of setting. Perfect for students, tourists, or business people learning Korean or travelling to Korea, it also contains a beginner guide to the Korean language, allowing for a deeper understanding of Korean than a typical Korean phrasebook or Korean dictionary. The book is broken into four basic sections: Common Korean Expressions and Key Words, Essential Korean Communication Tools, Korean Travel Vocabulary and Useful Korean Expressions, and Korean Pronunciation Guides for Key Korean Names and Signs. All Korean words and phrases are written in Romanized form as well phonetically, making pronouncing Korean a breeze. For example, the word for "Hello", Yoboseyo is also written as Yoe-boh-say-yoh. Authentic Korean script (Hangul) is also included so that in the case of difficulties the book can be shown to the person the user is trying to communicate with. Key features of Survival Korean include: Hundreds of useful Korean words and expressions. Up-to-date internet, mobile, and social media terms An English-Korean index with more than 1,000 additional words and their pronunciation for quick reference. Romanized forms, phonetic spellings, and Korean script (Hangul) for all words and phrases. A concise background and history of the Korean language. An introduction to the Korean Alphabet. A pronunciation guide for Korean syllables. A guide to Korean grammar.

Marching Through Suffering is a deeply personal portrait of the ravages of famine and totalitarian politics in modern North Korea since the 1990s. Featuring interviews with more than thirty North Koreans who defected to Seoul and Tokyo, the book explores the subjective experience of the nation's famine and its citizens' social and psychological strategies for coping with the regime. These oral testimonies show how ordinary North Koreans, from farmers and soldiers to students and diplomats, framed the mounting struggles and deaths surrounding them as the famine progressed. Following the development of the disaster, North Koreans deployed complex discursive strategies to rationalize the horror and hardship in their lives, practices that maintained citizens' loyalty to the regime during the famine and continue to sustain its rule today. Casting North Koreans as a diverse people with a vast capacity for adaptation rather than as a monolithic entity passively enduring oppression, Marching Through Suffering positions personal history as key to the interpretation of political violence.

Kim Jong Un and the Bomb tells the story of how North Korea-once derided in the 1970s as a "fourth-rate pipsqueak" of a country by President Richard Nixon-came to credibly threaten the American homeland with a thermonuclear bomb atop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile by November 2017.

Featuring contributions by some of the leading experts in Korean studies, this book examines the political content of Kim Jong-Il's regime maintenance, including both the domestic strategy for regime survival and North Korea's foreign relations with South Korea, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. It considers how and why the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) became a hermit kingdom in the name of Juche (self-reliance) ideology, and the potential for the barriers of isolationism to endure. This up-to-date analysis of the DPRK's domestic and external policy linkages also includes a discussion of the ongoing North Korean nuclear standoff in the region.

North Korea’s economic and security policies imperil both itself and its neighbours. The economy has been contracting for almost a decade, and the regime appears unwilling or unable to arrest the decline. Instead, Pyongyang has resorted to begging for international aid. This approach alone cannot work: fundamental reform is needed; without it, the regime cannot survive. In the meantime, the North’s problems will be destabilising for the region. Pyongyang has secured short-term international humanitarian assistance, but in the long term the South is its best hope for investment and economic help. Despite Pyongyang’s defensive approach to the South, limited commercial arrangements are in place, and may moderate the North’s policies and help to ease the unpredictable consequences of Pyongyang’s collapse. Pyongyang has tried to improve relations with the US in a bid to ease economic sanctions and attract investment. However, the nuclear deal reached with the US in October 1994 – under which the North agreed to give up its ambiguous nuclear programme – is in difficulties. In this paper, David Reese argues that, despite these problems, the North’s neighbours must persevere with engagement policies. At the same time, South Korea and the US must maintain their security posture on the Peninsula. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s attempts to establish commercial links with the North need time and patience, and should not be derailed by relatively minor incidents. Both Seoul and Washington must ensure that they coordinate their policies to prevent the North from playing one off against the other. Selectively easing sanctions on a case-by-case basis could allow the North to earn desperately needed hard currency. Although it is difficult for Washington and Seoul to maintain political support for engagement, both should make further efforts to draw the North into making significant policy changes. The US and South Korea should ensure that they involve the interested regional parties in efforts to draw the North into the international community. China has a key role to play in developments on the Peninsula. Both Seoul and Washington should therefore ensure that they work closely with Beijing. While historical sensitivities make it difficult for Japan to play a leading role, Tokyo would be central to the North’s economic recovery, and must not be marginalised. Russia also has a contribution to make to the broader security guarantees which could develop from accommodation between North and South. Ultimately, the course of events on the Peninsula will depend primarily on the North. Pyongyang shows little sign of being prepared to engage constructively with the US and South Korea. As its economy deteriorates, its options will narrow further. Until domestic forces in North Korea shift, the US and its allies should expect a protracted phase of desultory and sometimes destabilising diplomatic manoeuvres by Pyongyang.

The book deals with the influences Social Darwinism exerted upon Korea’s modern ideologies in their formative period - especially nationalism – after its introduction to Korea in 1883 and before Korea’s annexation by Japan in 1910. It shows that the belief in the “survival of the fittest” as the overarching cosmic and social principle constituted the main underpinning for the modernity discourses in Korea in the 1890s-1900s. Unlike the dominant ideology of traditional Korea, Neo-Confucianism, which was largely promoted by the scholar-official elite, Social Darwinism appealed to the modern intellectuals, but also to the entrepreneurs, providing the justification for their profit-seeking activities as part of the “national survival” project. As an ideology of Korea’s nascent capitalism, Social Darwinism in Korea could, however, hardly be called a liberal creed: it clearly prioritized “national survival” over individual rights and interests.

The day after Thanksgiving, five months into the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur flew to American positions in the north and grandly announced an end-the-war-by-Christmas offensive, despite recent evidence of intervention by Mao's Chinese troops. Marching north in plunging temperatures, General Edward Almond's X Corps, which included a Marine division under the able leadership of General Oliver Smith, encountered little resistance. But thousands of Chinese, who had infiltrated across the frozen Yalu River, were lying in wait and would soon trap tens of thousands of US troops. Led by the Marines, an overwhelmed X Corps evacuated the frigid, mountainous Chosin Reservoir vastness and fought a swarming enemy and treacherous snow and ice to reach the coast. Weather, terrain, Chinese firepower, and a 4,000-foot chasm made escape seem impossible in the face of a vanishing Christmas. But endurance and sacrifice prevailed, and the last troopships weighed anchor on Christmas Eve. In the tradition of his Silent Night and Pearl Harbor Christmas, Stanley Weintraub presents another gripping narrative of a wartime Christmas season. A Military Book Club main selection