[
    {
        "id": 206690,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1972",
        "page_number": 238,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "232\n\n \nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n \nSo much for the contents; the background is in many ways even more interesting. As Korea is a peninsula, it is a natural junction of migration routes from the North. Some species cross the north of the peninsula to continue down the coast of China, and these are rare in the Republic of Korea. Others pass through Korea, and then go either south-east to Japan and the Ryukyus, or south-west to rejoin the coast of China lower down. This has been the subject of many years of study by Professor Won, who ringed over 185,000 birds in seven years between 1964 and 1970. Migration in Asia is still comparatively little known, although an intensive programme run by the U.S. Government Migratory Animals Pathological Survey over this period, involving the ringing of several million birds in many countries in Asia, has begun to scratch the surface of our vast ignorance of this subject.\n\n \nThe conservation of wildlife is in most parts of Asia merely a pipedream for the future; though National Parks are being established in a few countries, and in a few isolated instances, particularly in Japan, special attention has been paid to the preservation of endangered species of birds, such as the Japanese Crested Ibis. The Republic of Korea shows an utter disregard for the welfare of the 'commoner' birds, to the extent that very few can be seen near the cities, and those in the remoter agricultural areas are more and more affected by pesticides. On the other hand, fifteen species are designated as National Treasures, and are protected at all times, and a number of areas are designated as nature reserves. The authors express the hope \"that in future the law will not be flaunted to the point where a mounted specimen of a 'National Treasure' may be seen openly for sale in a shop in the centre of Seoul!”\n\n \nTheir hope was fulfilled rather sooner than they might have wished. In April 1971, a nest of the Oriental White Stork was discovered for the first time for at least ten years; this is a species, or subspecies, in grave danger of extinction. Four days after the nest was found, the male was shot a mile and a half away. The offender was caught, and prosecuted, and subsequently given six months in jail for the offence.\n\n \nWith this kind of encouragement, and with the help of Gore and Won's book, let us hope that the future of Korean ornithology will be brighter than the past. This book was, I know, a costly venture, and the enterprise of the two authors and of its publishers, the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215355,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 132,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "80\n\n21 This is present day Maoming in western Guangdong province, not too far from the Liaozhou peninsula leading down to Hainan.\n\n22 A city in south eastern Guangdong province, half way between the Liaozhou peninsula and the Pearl River.\n\n23 Note that there are two different deities, Longwei Shenggong worshipped by the Hainanese and Longwei Shengwang worshipped by the Chaozhou people. The latter is, to all intents and purposes, a local Earth God.\n\n24\n\n25 Laomu, Old Mother [or Elderly Matron], is a title often mentioned in popular stories. In Xue Dingshan's Campaign to the West Laomu was Fan Lihua's teacher who, in eight years, taught her the art of moving mountains and raising armies from a handful of beans.\n\nAn elderly Chaozhou man in a Kowloon temple confided that Lishan [‘Fan Lihua' he called her] is a fictional character to support the story of the two generals Xue, and that much of their legends have little or no historical basis.\n\n26 Xue Dingshan's father, Xue Rengui, also a general, was an early Tang hero who not only also led an expedition to the west, he also served in the Korean campaign of Tang Tai Cong. Xue Dingshan, otherwise known as Xue Gang, is claimed to have saved the life of his emperor and is now a Fukienese cult deity, the face of whose image is characterised by extraordinary and colourful decorations.\n\n27 William Mesny relates that recumbent iron images of oxen were believed to be a protection from floods when these images were placed along the banks of river courses and lakes likely to overflow. He noticed several along the banks of the Grand Canal in 1874 and was told that they had been placed there by Liu Bowen Mesny's Chinese Miscellany: Vol. IV: Shanghai: 11 February 1905.\n\n28 As in Taipan, the Senior Boss.\n\n29 The shrine and its images disappeared, doubtless into a high rise flat, though it could have gone the way of so many minor cults and disappeared due, perhaps, to the aged temple keeper's demise.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215672,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 449,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "401\n\nin August 2002.\n\nThe North Koreans quickly crushed South Korean defences at the 38th parallel. The main North Korean attack force next moved down the west side of the peninsula toward Seoul, the South Korean capital, thirty-five miles below the parallel, and entered the city on June 28. Secondary thrusts down the peninsula's centre and down the east coast kept pace with the main drive. The South Koreans withdrew in disorder; those troops driven out of Seoul were forced to abandon most of their equipment because the bridges over the Han River at the south edge of the city were prematurely demolished. The North Koreans halted after capturing Seoul, but only briefly to regroup before crossing the Han.\n\nWhen MacArthur received word to commit ground units, the main North Korean force had already crossed the Han River. By July 3, a westward enemy attack had captured a major airfield at Kimpo and the Yellow Sea port of Inch'ŏn. Troops attacking south repaired a bridge so that tanks could cross the Han and moved into the town of Suwon, twenty-five miles below Seoul, on the 4th.\n\nThe speed of the North Korean drive coupled with the unreadiness of American forces compelled MacArthur to disregard the principle of mass and commit units piecemeal to trade space for time. Where to open a delaying action was clear, for there were few good roads in the profusion of mountains making up the Korean peninsula, and the best of these below Seoul, running on a gentle diagonal through Suwon, Osan, Taejon, and Taegu to the port of Pusan in the southeast, was the obvious main axis of North Korean advance. At MacArthur's order, two rifle companies, an artillery battery, and a few other supporting units of the 24 Division moved into a defensive position astride the main road near Osan, ten miles below Suwon, by dawn on July 5.\n\nComing out of Suwon in a heavy rain, a North Korean division supported by thirty-three tanks reached and, with barely a pause, attacked the Americans around 8:00 a.m. on the 5th. The rain cancelled air support, communications broke down, and the task force was, under any circumstances, too small to prevent North Korean infantry from flowing around both its flanks. By mid-afternoon, the task force was pushed into a disorganised retreat with over 150 casualties and the loss of all equipment save small arms.\n\nThe next three delaying actions, though fought by larger forces, had similar results. In each case, North Korean armour or infantry assaults against the front of the American position were accompanied by an infantry double envelopment.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216434,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 193,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "143\n\nof the natives and made a very favourable impression was in the prohibition of religious propaganda on the part of [foreign] priests.\n\nForeign bias towards the Japanese\n\nThe great majority of western correspondents in the field would appear from their reporting to have had Japanese sympathies. British illustrated histories regularly contained favourable reports on individual scenes and acts by Japanese forces. They were frequently praised for humanitarian acts and regularly reported as having paid particular care in their treatment of and friendly relations with the Chinese population.\n\nA western observer reported that 'in May 1904 prior to the Japanese assault on Dalny (Dalian) a Japanese sergeant made his way into the Chinese quarter, and by spreading news of a great Japanese victory and a quickly arriving Japanese army, induced the residents to fly the Japanese flag, and so stampeded the Russians.'\n\nThe Japanese fought their way for three months, up the Korean Peninsula, stormed across the Yalu in April 1904 and set up their Headquarters in Andong, a Chinese town of some size. Here, stores of all sorts were purchased from the Chinese, though at an exorbitant cost. Chinese coolies, laden with military stores, competed with bullock carts, similarly laden, crowding the road now filled with marching troops and empty carts returning from the front. Coolies and carts were plentiful as they had no problem working for the Japanese who paid promptly, unlike the Russians.\n\nIn general, the lives of Chinese coolies were wretched and the Japanese Army commander issued an order reminding his troops that they were fighting the Russians and not the Chinese, and that they should remember they were fighting an enemy in the country of their friends. A Japanese report claimed that in Manchuria, as in Korea, they had made full use of Chinese coolie labour but had worked their coolies as transport carriers in the same scientifically humane way they worked their horses. After three months of unremitting labour the carrier coolies, well fed, well treated, at a daily wage five times as high as they had been accustomed to earn, and so well looked after that there had been only 2% of sickness among them, were in better condition than when the campaign began.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]