By ROBERT NEFF
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
Last Saturday [June 11], the Korean Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society [RAS] held its annual garden party. Last year?????s party was hosted by the American Ambassador at his residence, this year, the British Ambassador held it at his residence. This was the first time that I had the opportunity to visit the British Ambassador?????s compound and I found it more beautiful than I expected.
The rain that had dampened Friday, disappeared Saturday morning, and as the guests arrived in small groups, they could be overheard ooh-ing and aw-ing as they gazed upon the compound bathed in the summer?????s sun. Indeed it was almost surreal with the beautiful flower gardens, the bright colors of the Korean traditional dancers????? costumes, and the clanging and banging of the dancers????? instruments as they danced around the assembled guests ??? it almost seemed as if we had stepped back a hundred years ago.
The guests were from all walks of life and nationalities. There were students, teachers, professors, journalists, and of course, diplomats. I think that the RAS is one of the least known organizations in Korea that provides some of the most interesting and educating lectures, trips, and events. It is also one of the oldest.
According to the Transactions of the RAS [2000], the Korean RAS was formed on June 16, 1900 by seventeen people who gathered in the Reading Room of the Seoul Union Club. They were mainly foreigners who had a great interest in Korea and sought to further their knowledge of Korea through general meetings and the exchange of lectures and papers. Of course many people, including members of the Korean RAS, don?????t know just how important the RAS was to Korea?????s history.
In 1880 and 1881, there was a great deal of interest about Korea. Korea was known as the Hermit Kingdom and any information about this mystical place was duly reported in the newspapers in Japan and, especially, in Shanghai, China. It was in Shanghai, China, that the Northern China Branch of the RAS was located. At several of their meetings they discussed Korea and translated French documents into English. Over the next couple of years most of the chief members of this branch visited Korea and wrote about it ??? perhaps the most famous was von Mollendorff who was the first Western advisor to Korea. When von Mollendorff formed the Korean Customs Department, a great number of the people were members of the Northern China Branch of the RAS, that he brought from Shanghai with him. This was basically the opening of the Choson Kingdom to the West.
What can the RAS offer you? This is what they offered last year: 47 tours most of them were in Korea, but there were also trips to Japan, China, Mongolia, North Vietnam and Cambodia. Some of the tours were academic and educational, but others were just pure fun ??? such as the rafting, snow country, and caving tours. There were 19 free lectures, given by acknowledged experts in their fields such as Dr. Andrei Lankov, Prof. Al Zaruba, Michael Breen, Andrew Salmon, Dr. Jan Yeonok, and countless others [exclusion of their names is only due to space restriction]. The topics ranged from Korean Food, North Korea, Folk Painting, Church Growth in Korea, historical lectures, and traditional music.
Members also receive 10% discount on books sold by the RAS, in which there are well over 350 titles. It is also a great opportunity to meet a lot of people that you might not normally get to meet. A great number of the diplomats in Seoul are members of the RAS, and a large number of visiting professors from Europe, Australia, and the United States are members and stop by and give lectures when they are in town.
I encourage everyone that is a member or reader of the Marmot?????s Hole to join this wonderful organization.
I wanted to include some pictures - my camera is going bad so they aren’t great, but the picture files are too big to upload - perhaps if Marmot shows me how I can do it
19 Comments
That cornerstone in the photo is an excellent bit of textual evidence for the different calendar systems in use during the Chosn Dynasty.
“The 16th year of Kwang Hsu” refers to the Chinese emperor Guangxu (?´‘??œ; ?…‰?·?). Reflecting Korea’s tributary relationship to China, official documents prior to 1896 were dated using the Chinese reign years. (Apart from the Sillok (??¤?¡?; ????Œ?), the royal chronicles written up to document each monarch’s life, where the Korean king’s reign years were used1890 would have been Kojong 28 (?³???… 28?…?; ????®??ºŒ????…??¹´).)
“The 499th of the Corean Era” (with a darn “C,” just to stir things up!) refers to the era Kaeguk (?°œ??; ????œ?), which counted forward from the founding of the Chosn Dynasty in 1392, 1392 being year 1. I wasn’t aware that Kaeguk was actually used prior to 1895 or so (when Korea declared its independence from China), but there you have it.
Probably the RAS Korea Branch’s most seminal contribution to Korean Studies has been G. M. McCune’s and E. O. Reischauer’s 1939 paper “The Romanization of the Korean Language Based upon Its Phonetic Structure,” a 55-page article that thoroughly analyzes the phonetics and orthography of Korean, and outlined what has ever since been called McCune-Reischauer Romanizationsomething of a disservice to the linguists Choi Hyon Pai, Jung Insub, and Gim Shon Gi, whom the authors openly acknowledge for their assistance. The paper was published in Volume 29 (1939) of the Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. (A link to the article may be found here.)
The RASKB also published Paul S. Crane’s 1967 book Korean Patterns, much loved by interested expats and other foreigners (including myself), but somewhat derided in some academic circles.
, first published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1967, the fifth edition being published in 1999. (This is, by the way, a well-known and fascinating?€”but somewhat controversial?€”book, having been the subject of at least one academic panel. Kyobo Books’ page for the book is here.)
Sorry, scratch that last paragraph. Let’s try it again:
Probably the RAS Korea Branch’s most seminal contribution to Korean Studies has been G. M. McCune’s and E. O. Reischauer’s 1939 paper “The Romanization of the Korean Language Based upon Its Phonetic Structure,” a 55-page article that thoroughly analyzes the phonetics and orthography of Korean, and outlined what has ever since been called McCune-Reischauer Romanizationsomething of a disservice to the linguists Choi Hyon Pai, Jung Insub, and Gim Shon Gi, whom the authors openly acknowledge for their assistance. The paper was published in Volume 29 (1939) of the Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. (A link to the article may be found here.)
The RASKB also published Paul S. Crane’s 1967 book Korean Patterns, much loved by interested expats and other foreigners (including myself), but somewhat derided in some academic circles.
Takes me back to the Officers’ Wives Club stories I used to do for army newspapers. Ugh.
I’ve been directed to use the “Korean Patterns” book in a Korean culture class I teach. I have no choice but to use it, and it does have its uses. In some sense it’s an artifact (e.g., a document of socio-historical interest) that presents a certain Western view of Korea in the post-War era. It has some very offensive points in it, both to Koreans and to US military people.
Well, yes, it’s a definitely a book of its time. I didn’t pick up on any offensive remarks regarding GIs, though: maybe I didn’t read those sections carefully enough.
But there are some observations he makes that are still valid today. And the appendices are priceless: the lunar holidays, yuksip kapcha (sixty-year cycle), and lists of medicinal plants and kinship terms, for example.
How can we join the RAS? Anyone have a link or contact info?
What field is Andy Salmon an acknowledged expert in again?
Curious -
Just one more comment. I liked how you gave the background to the date system, but I wish that you had elaborated why the British chose to do that. As far as I know they are the only ones using that system during the period with non-Korean Government documents and reports. My personal belief is it re-emphasized Britian’s loyalty towards the Korean tributary relationship to China. Britian held the trump cards in China, and as long as China was in charge of Korea, then by proxy, Britian held the cards in Korea. We can see this though the way Hart controlled the Customs Department, Baber tried to assist Yuan Shih’kai in overthrowing King Kojong in 1888, the Port Hamilton affair, and the frequent spats the British Representatives had with the Japanese, and Americans.
I eat lunch with Andy from time to time and we always go to Burger King.
Robert Neff wrote:
…I liked how you gave the background to the date system, but I wish that you had elaborated why the British chose to do that. As far as I know they are the only ones using that system during the period with non-Korean Government documents and reports. My personal belief is it re-emphasized Britian?€™s loyalty towards the Korean tributary relationship to China. Britian held the trump cards in China, and as long as China was in charge of Korea, then by proxy, Britian held the cards in Korea. We can see this though the way Hart controlled the Customs Department, Baber tried to assist Yuan Shih?€™kai in overthrowing King Kojong in 1888, the Port Hamilton affair, and the frequent spats the British Representatives had with the Japanese, and Americans.
Okay, that is quite interesting. If they were indeed the only westerners using Chinese reign years in reference to Korea, then it would certainly be a fair question as to why. Your suggestion that the UK could be considered in a sense to have controlled (or aspired to control) Korea by proxy is indeed intriguing, and makes sense.
I really hadn’t considered that angle; I just naively thought that they were being pedantically inclusive by giving the Chinese reign year and Korean era year!
By the way, I presume that’s the cornerstone for the British ambassador’s residence?
Okay, looks like I will never master the blockquotes.
Think I’ll stick to good old quotation marks in the future.
“I eat lunch with Andy from time to time and we always go to Burger King.” Brendon Carr.
I rest my case - nothing beats a Whopper.
Okay, looks like I will never master the blockquotes.
Why? You write in Korean, don’t you? And you think HTML tags are too complicated?
Eveyrthing gets wrapped in a pair of tags. An opening blockquote tag gets closes with a closing blockquote tag — which in HTML is written exactly as the opening tag but with a leading slash.
Brendon:
Either I was using the tags properlyin which case it’s hit and miss with the bq tags for some bizarre reasonor I was inadvertently mistyping them and not proofreading my HTML code. I’m not HTML-averse by any stretch.
When they didn’t show up properly to the correction I posted, well, I figured it was time to give up.
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