I found out totally by accident that there's a new (2nd) edition (September 9, 2015) out of "A Field Guide to the Birds of Korea." I saw a couple guys taking pictures on the Jungnang Stream in Seoul and approached them asking if there was something special. They pointed to a large group of ducks and said there was a Ferruginous amongst them. To show me what they were talking about, they then pulled out (the Korean language version of) a book that I was surprised to find out was a new edition of the Birds of Korea field guide. A bit of digging later turned up the English edition.
The guys told me that it had “more than 50” species not included in the old 2000/2005 edition. I haven’t done a detailed comparison with the old edition, but the new one does have a lot of new species in it (e.g. Yellow-bellied Tit, Pardaliparus venustulus) and it includes the (interesting to me) information on when the bird was first recorded on the peninsula (for the Yellow-bellied Tit, “first recorded in October 2005 on Socheongdo island, Incheon, but numbers of birds increasing rapidly, distribution spreading and some have even been reported breeding.”). It has some new subspecies like the p. kapustini subspecies of the Great Tit, Parus major. It is also updated for splits (e.g. the new edition lists Northern Boobook, Ninox japonica, instead of Brown Hawk Owl, Ninox scutulata). And it also has updated common names (e.g. Eurasian Jay rather than just Jay, Common Pochard rather than Pochard, and, much to my dismay, adopted Yellow-rumped Flycatcher instead of the former (and superior) nomenclature, Tri-color Flycatcher…). It’s in exactly the same format as the old edition.
It seems that the authors couldn't (didn't try to?) get a major publisher to pick the book up. It's (I think) a print-on-demand book that I could only find available on a Korean (and Korean language only) shopping website. So, needless to say, it won't be easy to get outside of Korea. Nonetheless, I'll post the specs on the books here and let anyone out there who's interested see what they can do. Hope it helps. Interestingly, the back page of the English version says it was proofread by Mark Brazil. So if anyone knows how to contact him, he might know more...
--"A field guide to the birds of Korea" ISBN 9788995141564
website I found it on http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=67151886
--Korean language version ISBN 9788995141557
website I found it on http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=43846168
The guys told me that it had “more than 50” species not included in the old 2000/2005 edition. I haven’t done a detailed comparison with the old edition, but the new one does have a lot of new species in it (e.g. Yellow-bellied Tit, Pardaliparus venustulus) and it includes the (interesting to me) information on when the bird was first recorded on the peninsula (for the Yellow-bellied Tit, “first recorded in October 2005 on Socheongdo island, Incheon, but numbers of birds increasing rapidly, distribution spreading and some have even been reported breeding.”). It has some new subspecies like the p. kapustini subspecies of the Great Tit, Parus major. It is also updated for splits (e.g. the new edition lists Northern Boobook, Ninox japonica, instead of Brown Hawk Owl, Ninox scutulata). And it also has updated common names (e.g. Eurasian Jay rather than just Jay, Common Pochard rather than Pochard, and, much to my dismay, adopted Yellow-rumped Flycatcher instead of the former (and superior) nomenclature, Tri-color Flycatcher…). It’s in exactly the same format as the old edition.
It seems that the authors couldn't (didn't try to?) get a major publisher to pick the book up. It's (I think) a print-on-demand book that I could only find available on a Korean (and Korean language only) shopping website. So, needless to say, it won't be easy to get outside of Korea. Nonetheless, I'll post the specs on the books here and let anyone out there who's interested see what they can do. Hope it helps. Interestingly, the back page of the English version says it was proofread by Mark Brazil. So if anyone knows how to contact him, he might know more...
--"A field guide to the birds of Korea" ISBN 9788995141564
website I found it on http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=67151886
--Korean language version ISBN 9788995141557
website I found it on http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=43846168
