Books by Jongwoo Han

This book merges and harmonizes the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into one. This unified version, which I call The Gospel, is based on the faith that the four different gospels exist in order to form together the complete story of Jesus life and ministry. I consolidated these sources by identifying common denominators among them as well as parts that are unique to each, and then interweaving it all into a single narrative, using only original texts. This integrated version may offer greater incentive to our youth, laymen, and non-believers as well as professionals to read and learn more about what Jesus did and taught. (Acts 1:1). In the past, there have been many attempts to make the four Gospels easier for readers, often displaying similar episodes in parallel columns, in an effort to resolve the Gospels narrative complexity by harmonizing them in one way or another; however, in regard to the text itself, previous books do not rise to the level of precision and completeness that is achieved here. Answering this need for a clear chronological telling of The Story of Jesus, this book unifies every account of the four Gospels into a single story, without omitting or compromising any part. On a given topic in Jesus ministry, this book uses as its base whichever gospel is the greatest common denominator, consolidates identical or similar parts from other Gospels, and integrates the unique and different elements of each book into a single story.

No book has addressed the simultaneous phenomena of Korea's rapid economic development and its vibrant democratization in a single coherent paradigm. The late developmentalist approach emphasizes the strong role of Korea's state and bureaucratic efficiency but does not explain how political development was concurrent with the economic miracles in the Han River; modernization and dependence theories also fail to explain the aspect of simultaneity in this phenomenon. What these three theories commonly miss is the unique relationship between state and society in Korea's long history of political culture. In this book, Jongwoo Han takes a holistic approach to understanding these phenomena by examining the state's role in the unprecedented economic development and society's capabilities to resist the state's centralized power. Han re-articulates state-society relations through Onuf's social constructivist approach based on three rules of a political community: hegemony, hierarchy, and heteronomy. This book expands upon this effort to re-construct the state and society relations in two ways. First, it produces case studies of the capital city of Hanyang (Joseon Dynasty from 1392 to 1910), Kyeongseong (Japanese colonial control from 1910 to 1945), and Seoul (1945-current). The capital city is analyzed as a container for the major ideologies and ways of thinking that have shaped three important political eras. Second, i adopts two indigenous thoughts, Neo-Confucianism and geomancy, as sources of the main political and cultural ideologies that shape Korea's state and society relations. These sources have never been treated as units of political analysis. This book finds that both Neo-Confucianism and geomancy, over two periods of Hanyang and Kyeongseong, are two main contributing factors of the emergence of the developmental state and vibrant democracy in Korea in the Seoul era.

Jongwoo Han's Networked Information Technologies, Elections, and Politics: Korea and the United States is a study on the changes that have been occurring in elections, politics, and democratic movements in both the United States and Korea. There has undoubtedly been a paradigm shift in political discourse, as the industrial age mass media-based public sphere gives way to the new networked information technologies (NNIT)-based cyber sphere. Analyzing and comparing Korea's Presidential Election in 2002 and the United States' 2008 Presidential Election, Han discusses the impact of NNITs in electoral politics, as previously apolitical young generations have become more involved and transformed themselves into both a cohesive voting bloc and a formidable constituency. Han also addresses the role of NNITs in Korea's beef crisis and President Obama's legislation battle to reform the U.S. health care system, revealing unprecedented opportunities to observe this major change occurring in political systems during the so-called Information Age.