In Korean wilds and villages (1938) | Hacker News Reader

In Korean wilds and villages (1938)

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44 pointsgeorgecmu31 comments

I love old books like this - I used to spend hours pouring over ebay (and yahoo auctions) picking up all sorts of weird and historically interesting books for less than £5 each.

Some of the most interesting (to me) I found through reading the 'you may also like' or 'by the same author' in the front or back of random purchases - and would then spend a period tracking then down. 'An Island to Oneself' and 'The Insecure Offenders' were probably two that I had the biggest impact on me and that were the most interesting, that I found this way.

I tried to buy a copy of 'A Island to Oneself' for a friend recently and couldn't get one for less than £250 so directed to him to the Internet Archive instead.

From the first few pages: "As is well known, the Russians now make a work day of Sunday, taking their rest instead every sixth day."

Never knew this. Indeed, from another source: "The nepreryvka was supposed to revolutionize the concept of labor, set a match to productivity and make religious worship too troublesome to be worth the effort. But it failed on virtually every count. Adjustments were made and in 1931, the cycle was extended to last six days. After 11 years of trial and error, the project was axed in June, 1940."

https://www.history.com/news/soviet-union-stalin-weekend-lab...

Where I live 4 and now even 3 day work weeks are a fairly common thing.

Where is that, if you don't mind me asking?

Typically it's two income households where both partners work part-time. But there are also instances of single people and single parents doing this. In part this is possible because of the relatively strong social network here, for as long as we've still got it, there have been many attempts to break it down.

Fascinating. By strong social network, do you mean that people within the same networks give charitably and share resources with one another, enabling the collective to reduce total individual compensation? Originally I figured most 3-4 day workers were doing something like coast fi.

I meant the degree to which the state will help to subsidize lower income households through all kinds of arrangements, such as health car, child care, housing and other such subsidies.

Very interesting. I hadn't considered the state as an actor. Thanks!

You might have misunderstood what happened. They changed the duration of the literal week, not the workweek.

Yes, but the obvious goal was to squeeze more labor out of the population by removing the religiously supported 'rest' day.

entrenched religious authorities used the rest day as a lever for religious observation laws and such.. both sides, secular red and traditional religious groups, pushing hard to "command" the week.. that is a guess from afar

Absolutely, it's a tithe on time. It's power structures competing for influence.

Actually, there were more rest days under the new system, they just weren't synced up (different people would have a different rest day).

There is something so charming about the economy of expression of English books, particularly travel or personal accounts, written before about the end of the 1950s. The accounts tend to be straightforward and almost stoic in their description of hardship, death, joy, and pain. Very little hand-wringing, no political correctness, and no navel-gazing about feelings. I can’t say I always prefer it but it is refreshing to read now and then. One also sees this in old war propaganda films or documentaries from the 30s and 40s.

> almost stoic in their description of hardship, death, joy, and pain

Writers in the 1930’s remember a world before antibiotics, before vaccines, before a lot of things we take for granted. Death and suffering were a common part of life. WW1 was ~10 years ago, as was the spanish flu. Dying from tuberculosis was common.

If you weren’t stoic about it all, I don’t think you could live life back then.

i hope u dont mean the highly ineffective covid vaccine

No I mean how none of my friends have polio or died from measles.

thank you.

A mere 13 days by train! Interesting that only 30 years later the trip would take under half a day.

My great aunt was in Taiwan (Formosa) before the war while it was occupied by the Japanese, as a Christian missionary, and now I wonder how she got there from Liverpool. It must have been an epic journey.

The commentary on page 25 -- on Koreans and Korea under Japan rule -- is extraordinary for how unfiltered it is. I suspect most Koreans back then would have objected.

Agreed. Gross over-generalization back then but some truths be told about the somewhat more individualistic behavior in comparison to the Japanese mindset back then.

I kept waiting for the shoe to drop on the Japanese occupation and should not have been surprised by how pro colonialism it was considering how many Japanese people were mentioned in a trip to Korea prior to that point. There a couple of somewhat recent Kdramas about the time which show how contemporary Korea depicts the time, Mr Sunshine and Bridal Mask, and many depictions of the murdering of the queen of Korea by Japanese assassins.

This is very interesting to me. I have downloaded and will read on my kobo.

There is a certain appeal to the early days of traveling, before the mass market availability that exists today. I think it's that unexplored pioneer type of semi solitude which makes it adventurous. My only analogy is living through the transition from pre internet days to the present saturated social media days.

But a person on YouTube doing the same thing today would result in me just ignoring or at best, fast forwarding through the video. I think future generations might appreciate that same video for other reasons... and think me a moron for not appreciating it.

I've been listening to audiobooks from Librivox and stories of the circumnavigation of the globe have been interesting:

- _Sailing Alone Around The World_ Joshua Slocum

- _Around the World on a Bicycle_ Thomas Stevens

Apparently the first person do circumnavigate the globe using commercial transport was an Englishman (anyone know the name?) who did it with just a letter of credit from his bank and his visiting cards --- I believe during or just before the time of Queen Victoria. I'd be glad to know the further specifics if anyone knows them.

Another book on circumnavigation, more recent, which I've been wanting to read is _Half-Safe_ by Ben Carlin (he took a GPA around the world).

Some of your specifics sound like the journey of the non-military Hudson's Bay Company officer, Montréal wheeler-dealer and early obsessive Napoleon Bonaparte memorabilia collector Sir George Simpson in the 1840s.

https://archive.org/details/anoverlandjourn00simpgoog

Thanks! I think that's who I was told of --- adding it to my TBR pile.

"The author received in Keijo this photograph of his own children from a Japanese stranger, Mr. Kuroda, naval engineer, who had taken it by chance in Stockholm"

(Page 40 in the pager)

What are the odds!

reading about siberia / volga / russia reminds me of tolstoy's short story: how much land does a man need. also liked book called tiger by john vaillant.

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