Numismatic author Calvin Jin has just released FOR FREE DOWNLOAD his revised and edited book version of his blog posts that comprise the amazing Coinage in Late Modern Korea Prolific U.S. numismatic author Roger W. Burdette says "Calvin's work is exceptional and fills a significant gap in Korean coinage using original archival sources." Enjoy! --------------------- As a (long) sidenote: I was very sad to hear that Calvin did not win in the Numismatic Literacy Guild's "Best News or Blog Website" category for that organization's yearly awards. Mark my words: His research will prove to be a major addition and improvement to the numismatic literature and history of Korean coins. He lost out to the ANA's Reading Room in this category. The Reading Room's win is its THIRD straight annual win in this same category(!). Now, I cannot say that the ANA's Reading Room doesn't deserve recognition, I'm sure it does, but... three years in a row? And then there are the merits of Calvin's work: Coinage in Late Modern Korea at Calvin's blog site "Arirang Numismatics" is now the new standard work on Korean struck coins from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Calvin's work is the first real scholarly work in English on the subject of these coins in about seven decades to use primary documentation. The last real scholarly treatment of these coins was Section V of Alan D. Craig’s The Coins of Korea published in 1955, when that author was given access to the Bank of Japan’s Tanaka Collections of Korean coins. Craig had taken color photographs of those coins and had access to the Bank of Japan’s information on them. Craig’s work was about the only extended information available about Korea's early struck coins until the Bank of Korea published its History of Korean Money [중보 한국화폐] in 1969, which later became incorporated into the Bank of Korea’s later decennial historical publications. History of Korean Money [중보 한국화폐] itself was heavily informed by Japanese sources (and somewhat noticable biases). Calvin's work improves upon what was previously known about Korea’s modern struck coinage through the EXTENSIVE use of Korean official archives (actually for the first time!), and Japanese government and mint archival material, as well as other countries' diplomatic documents. Take a look at his citations in each of the chapters of this blog to see what I mean. Calvin's publication provides a necessary corrective to the history of this period by proving that, contrary to the tenor of the previous narratives, the Korean state was actually making earnest attempts at establishing a modern monetary system and that the Japanese takeover of Korea’s monetary system was, as Calvin wrote, “neither inevitable nor purely self-inflicted.” Perhaps the judges at NLG did not understand that Calvin had actually made a big advancement in the scholarly knowledge of Korean coins? Or am I naive to think that something like that even matters in the voting at NLG? Maybe the Reading Room really was all that and a bag o' chips this year? Again. Sorry for the rant. Yes, I wanted to rant about this, but I also thought that others here might want to know about Calvin's work. I think we can expect great things from Calvin Jin in the future. This new BOOK version of his research would be a real contender for the Book of the Year at NLG in 2027.
