Early 20th Century Korean literature The two most prominent Korean authors during the Japanese colonial rule of 1910-1945 were Choe Nam-seon and Yi Kwang-su. "The modern age is the age of power in which the powerful survive while the weak perish. This competition continues until death. But why? Because the struggle to be a victor and a survivor never ends. But how? It is a competition of intelligence, physical fitness, material power, economic power, the power of idea and confidence, and of organizational power. Everywhere this competition is underway daily." Capital Gazette 1917 Choe Nam-seon (1890- 1957),  a prominent Korean historian, poet and publisher, was a leading member of the Korean independence movement. However, in 1937, Choe began writing articles in support of Japan's aggression against China in the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1939 he became a professor at the Manchukuo Jianguo University. In 1943, attending the Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo, he stated that Koreans were fortunate to be colonized by Japan, and could receive no higher honor than to die fighting in Imperial Japan's effort to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. ______________________________________________ Yi Kwang-su's (1892-1950) serialized novel Mujông (The Heartless), published in 1917, was extremely popular. The novel depicts a love triangle between three youths during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea. Yi Hyông-sik is a shy, young English teacher at a middle school in Seoul. Indecisive, he is torn between two women: Kim Sôn-hyông, a wealthy, educated Christian and Pak Yông-ch’ae, a musically gifted woman, raised in a traditional Confucian manner. Through the vehicle of romantic melodrama, the author depicts Korea’s struggles with modern culture and national identity. "Hyong-sik believed that while all human beings were the same by nature, an individual or society could be improved and uplifted with the effort of that society or individual.  The women, however, believed that humans had no responsibility for what happened in life.  Human beings just lived life as it happened, with no improvement or reform through human will.  This is how Koreans view life!"    - excerpt from The Heartlesss (Mujong) Post-WWII Korean Literature In the early post-WWII years, most literature in South Korea  dealt with the daily struggles of ordinary citizens and the collapse of the traditional values. Some South Korean writers developed a traditionalist path, while others followed an experimentalist path. North Korea's post-WWII literature was controlled by the state. Emphasis was placed on the philosophy of self-reliance (Juche), described as Great Leader Kim Il-sung's "original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought."  Juche exhorts North Korean masses to master revolution and construction in order to achieve true socialism. 20th Century Korean Poetry Beside a chrysanthemum To bring one chrysanthemum to flower, the cuckoo has cried since spring. To bring one chrysanthemum to bloom, thunder has rolled through the black clouds. Flower, like my sister returning from distant, youthful byways of throat-tight longing to stand by the mirror: for your yellow petals to open, last night such a frost fell, and I did not sleep. - Sŏ Chŏngju (1915-2000) _________________________________________________ The...

The flamethrower has a long history of military use. - In the first century AD, the Greek navy developed a hand-pumped apparatus that shot bursts of fire at enemy ships. - In the 10th century AD, the Chinese employed a piston-driven weapon that sprayed “fierce fire oil.” - In 1915, Germany deployed a Flammenwerfer in a concerted action against British trenches, but most casualties were soldiers flushed into the open and shot. - In 1916, the British used a cumbersome experimental flame projector in the Battle of the Somme. It wasn’t until World War II that the flamethrower saw extensive use by both Allied and Axis powers. In the Pacific War, US Marines used the backpack-type M2A1-7 flamethrower and M2-2 flamethrowers to clear Japanese trenches, bunkers and caves. Sherman tanks, fitted with the "Ronson" system, were also deployed. Flamethrowers were used much less in the European campaign, although they were available for special deployments such as the Allied Normandy landings and the German response to the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

  In this 1915 German children's book the child has just awakened. He tells his mother "I was just in the field and killed all the enemy in some great battle." She smiles and tells him it was just a dream. But he can hardly grasp that all that beauty was just a dream.    via: Rob Schäfer@GERArmyResearch. Historian, Author, German military history 1848-1945, Historical Consultancy, Military Research & Genealogical Services. http://gmuhistoricalconsultancy.wordpress.com