Single and multiple word queries are allowed up to a limit of 50 characters. Common words such as "the," "when," "how," etc., are ignored, so there is no need to include them in your query.

SEARCH TIPS

NARROW YOUR SEARCH

If you want to search a particular section of this site, for example "Korean weather," select "Journey to Korea" in the pull-down menu and enter the keyword weather. Your search will only apply to the section about Korea. You won't have to scan multiple reults for weather in China, Japan, Mongolia, or Russia. This unique feature not only speeds up your search, but provides more relevant results.

CHECK YOUR SPELLING

You'll get better results when keywords are spelled correctly. This search engine will attempt to find words that "sound" similar to words in your search query and will still return relevant results.

For example, typing Kroea will find content with the word Korea, but it is always best to spell the search terms correctly.

CASE SENSITIVITY

Searches are case sensitive depending on how you type your query. If you're unsure about capitalization, lowercase words will match any case.

For example, typing korea will return documents containing korea, Korea or KOREA. Typing Korea will return only those documents containing Korea.

USE MULTIPLE KEYWORDS

Search results will return much better results from several words than from a single word.

For example, typing Andong Kim clan will yield more relevant results than typing only Andong. Note that relevant results will be returned even if they don't contain all your query terms.

EXAMPLE:   Asian warfare = require Asian, require warfare
• Finds "Asian Warfare", "Asian warfare" and "warfare among Asian nations."
• Will not find "Asian war."

USE QUOTATION MARKS

Use quotation marks to find a phrase or words which must appear adjacent to each other. In the above example, Andong Kim clan will include documents where Andong, Kim and/or clan could appear anywhere in the document and in any order. Typing "Andong Kim clan" however, will return only those documents where those three words appear adjacent to each other.

ASIAN NAMES

It is not uncommon for Asian names to include hyphens. If you include the hyphen in your query, e.g. Yi Sun-sin, the search engine will consider the hyphen as part of the name and return the proper results (assuming the name exists on this site). Do not put a space on either side of the hyphen, or the search engine will ignore it.

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

Use a plus (+) sign to require that a search term or phrase appear in the document. Use a minus (-) sign to forbid a search term or phrase to appear in the document. Do not put a space between the plus or minus sign and the query term. If you omit these operators, the search engine assumes you are using the plus sign with each word or phrase.

EXAMPLE: politics -Korean = require politics, forbid Korean
• Finds "Chinese politics", "Russian politics" and "Japanese politics."
• Will not find "Korean economics" or "Korean politics."

USE WILDCARDS

The asterisk (*) is used as a wildcard character. Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. For example, a search for co* will find the words Confucian, corporate, coastal, cooperation, Councilor and any other word that begins with "co." A search for *her* will return the words here, whether, together, and any other word containing the letters "her" anywhere in the word. The plus (+) and minus (-) operators and quotes for phrases can be combined with wildcards to yield very specific results. To avoid overly broad searches however, use the asterisk only in words or phrases which have at least three alphanumeric characters.

EXAMPLE: *confucian* philoso* = require words containing "confucian" and require words containing "philoso"
• Finds "Confucian philosophers," "Neoconfucianism," and "philosophical tenets of Confucianism."