This work is a translation of a 1996 Korean history book intended for general readers and designed to answer some of the questions that people had about life in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). It covers an impressive range of topics related to economy and society, such as farming, lives of the peasants, taxes, merchants, salt production, population growth, the lowborn class, divorce, the penal system, the eating culture, and the outhouses at the royal palace. These sorts of volumes are in quite high demand among Korean readers, and there have been a goodly number of volumes published over the past fifteen years to satiate this appetite for more specific knowledge on life in past times. Beyond that market niche, the works are generally easy to read and informative.
For those of us teaching premodern Korean history or culture at Western institutions, the question of how to incorporate daily life history (...
