Literary Nonfiction. Northeast Asia Studies. Environmental Studies. Korea's birds deserve a wider audience. The country's geographical location, topography, temperate climate, and wealth of diverse habitats combine to support an extraordinarily attractive avifauna. Many visitors to Korea see the impressive metropolitan centers of Seoul or Busan, and others may visit Jejudo Island's black sand beaches or hike the popular mountain trails. Fewer see the more hidden parts of the country: the western offshore islands, the scattered and diminishing wetlands, the picturesque east coast fishing villages, the mountain hamlets and the river valleys. We can glimpse these places through the birds that live there. Moreover, we can glimpse something else--hints of Korea's people, culture, and history. A picture of a bird yields a narrow but genuine window into a country's identity. What a country's arts or folklore or language says about nature--or says by means of nature--has a special authenticity. Above all, there are the birds themselves, in all their many types of beauty. This book seeks to introduce the birds: through photographs, through descriptions of their lives, and through the ways our different cultures, Western and Asian both, perceive them.

“I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” - Yeonmi Park "One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard - and one of the most inspiring." - The Bookseller “Park's remarkable and inspiring story shines a light on a country whose inhabitants live in misery beyond comprehension. Park's important memoir showcases the strength of the human spirit and one young woman's incredible determination to never be hungry again.” —Publishers Weekly In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea—and to freedom. Park confronts her past with a startling resilience. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Park’s testimony is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable.

This is the first academic book about the dinosaurs, birds and pterosaurs of Korea, one of the richest and most exciting regions on earth for the study of vertebrate ichnology. Many ichnogenera appear indigenous to Korea, and based on present evidence there is nowhere else in the world where such densities and diversity of vertebrate tracks have been reported. Many sites also reveal the highest density of bird and dinosaur track levels in the world. The book describes the significant advances in Cretaceous vertebrate ichnology and dinosaur research made in Korea over the past twenty years. Several dinosaur fossil sites have been excavated, and unique vertebrate fossils including dinosaurs and pterosaurs have been discovered. This landslide of discovery has resulted in a proliferation of papers on vertebrate tracks and remains from the Cretaceous of South Korea and the growing recognition that as a region it reveals multiple track-rich sequences of unique quality and scientific utility. Because of the outstanding ichnological resources in this region it has been dubbed the Korean Cretaceous Dinosaur Coast (KCDC), and many sites of national and international significance have been designated as national natural monuments of Korea. This book is written for geologists, paleontologists, ichnologists, geology and earth science students, and earth science teachers at high school, as well as the general reader interested in ancient life including the dinosaurs, birds, and pterosaurs of Korea. The goal of this book is to provide readers with a scientific understanding of Mesozoic life flourishing in the Korean Peninsula. To facilitate easy comprehension, the book contains many sketches, graphs, diagrams, photographs and tables and is supported by a comprehensive glossary.

"Delicate, understated writing that finds the extraordinary in the ordinary."--Tobias Hill U-il thinks he can fly like his favourite cartoon character Toto the Astroboy. His older sister, eleven-year-old U-mi, is doing her best to look after him since their mother died and their father deserted them. Now all they have are their well meaning but unhelpful neighbors--the Moons, Landlady Grandma, the weightlifting Mr Yi and his squawking widow bird--and despair is leading U-mi to mimic her father's behavior, abusing the one person closest to her. Oh Jung-Hee is an uncontested master of short fiction in Korea.