Preparing for Wednesday, I read an article named “the Imjin War: with a Focus on the First Invasion”, and “Naming the Imjin War”. I also read about the first chapter of a Korean War captive in Japan, “Encounters with the Adversity of War.” The articles were really helpful to get a quick understanding of the war. Japan attempted to invade Korea twice. China helped Aid Korea because Japan wanted to eventually go to China. Korea was the preparation to invade China. The second invasion was shut down quicker since Korea was prepared this time. The second article about naming the Imjin War showed how all three of these contributing countries call it different names. Korea calls it the Imjin War, China calls it Aiding Korea or Resisting Japan and Aiding Korea. Japan calls it Hideyoshi’s invasion or Bunroku Keicho no eki. The last thing I read was the Journal of the Korean captive. This was very sad to read. He described witnessing people starve, attempt to jump off, being killed, and so many more. He would write poems after experiences or after someone would pass away. Reading this as a first hand account is more important that reading this from a text book. This shows what people were actually going through and the trauma they endured. This has so much more emotion. He was writing to his people back in Korea. He also was writing to the future to show them what happened in the war and to educate.
On Thursday I replied to three of my classmates blog posts. On Friday I got to work on my final topic with people that had similar ideas as me. We were all able to work together and bounce ideas off of each other. I originally wanted to do a bunch of information about North Korea after the war. I changed it to focus on two specific ideas. I will be writing about the government and the Kim family. I did think about writing about the Imjin war, but I think I will stick with North Korea. I have not learned about it yet and I am really interested to see the Kims family influence on the country.
