The Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society will hold its first semi-monthly lecture-meeting of the year this Tuesday January 9th, at 7:30 pm, in the 2nd-floor Resident’s Lounge of the Somerset Palace Residence (near Anguk Station, downtown). All in English, free and open to the public, as always; more info: 763-9483 and http://www.raskb.com/
This time the talk is being given by my own humble self. My topic will be “Sacred Aspects and Assets of Jiri-san” — Korea’s oldest and largest National Park, way down south. By any standards, it is one of the handful of most-sacred mountains in all of Korea. It is a great national treasure, holding a vast cultural wealth which is under-utilized for inbound tourism attraction so far. It plays a major role in various Korean religions (particularly Buddhism and Shamanism) and ideologies of national identity, and these combine with various historical and ecological factors to make it such an important area. For more, see my own announcement, with the map: http://san-shin.org/RAS_Jiri-1-2007.html
I’ll show plenty of pictures to back up what I have to say. This follows my presentation to the RAS on Taebaek-san last June — I guess I’ve started a kind of a series on Korea’s most-sacred and most-interesting mountains. Come and enjoy, and perhaps a bunch of us will drink beer in the German Pub there afterwards. I’ve heard that they will offer two of my books for sale there, and if so I’ll sign them for those who wish…
Actually, I just presented this same paper on Jiri-san, in a more formal academic way, to a Korean-Studies Conference in India (!) in the middle of December (that 12-day trip is the reason why I haven’t been posting much here), and then revised it after the feedback I got, so think I’m ready to present it again… If anyone is interested to see my photos from that conference and tour in India, you can take a look at:
http://san-shin.org/India2006-1.html
Anyone who is interested in this entire academic field might be interested in these PACKS (Pacific-Asia Conference on Korean Studies) — to present on Dokdo or anything — the next one will be in 2008, we don’t yet know where, but it will be somewhere exotic and pleasant in the Asia-Pacific region… 
6 Comments
I seem to have nothing but bad luck getting to these lectures. I will be in the middle of an appointment in Yongin City at that time. This lecture sounds interesting as well . . . bugger.
Have they given any idea when the videos of some of the lectures will be up on the site? I’m really interested in catching some of them since I’m no longer in Korea…
This sounds pretty interesting - but same for me, not in the region to hear about it. Hope your India trip was a good one.
> when the videos of some of the lectures will be up on the site?
I hope to have news on this for you after Tues eve.
It was done, and it went pretty well. Maybe 40 people in the audience, packing the small room — my wife and her friends had to stand in the back all through it, as there were no more chairs.
I felt somewhat disappointed afterwards, that i had not been at the top of my game — not mentally organized enough (i never read from a script when i speak in public or lecture in the classrooms, just have an outline in my head and talk along with the flow). This time i had too much material to present and not nearly enough time, didn’t have a clear sense of what to cut, so i sort of quietly panicked halfway through — oh, well. The RAS President asked me to come back sometime and do a “part two”, covering what I didn’t get to this time, hopefully in a more systematic way. I’m sure i could do better…
i look forward to the video. unfortunately, i was not able to get there. however, forty folks for the fireside chat room must have been past max cap.