This translation of Kang Hang's Kanyangnok, or The Record of a Shepard, composed between 1597 and 1618 and compiled after his death, narrates Kang's experience as a war prisoner in Japan during and immediately after the Imjin War (1591–98), Japan's massive and destructive invasion of Korea. Spurring Ming Chinese intervention to aid Korea, the invasion was a major land and sea war that witnessed “by far the largest number of [soldiers] fighting in the sixteenth century anywhere in the world” (p. x). Kang was a scholar official during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). Captured in 1597, he was taken back to Japan with several family members but escaped and returned to Korea in 1600.
Artfully translated and informatively annotated by Kenneth Robinson and JaHyun Kim Haboush, who passed away before its publication, A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597–1600 contains an introduction, five chapters of translations (the last two...
