Firsts are always difficult to say with any degree of certainty. Many people assume that America’s first contact with Korea was during the Korean-American War in 1871 - a war that was described by one leading newspaper as “Our War with the Heathens.” However, America’s earliest contacts with Korea could be traced back to the alleged capture of a mermaid off the coast of Korea in 1824 that was supposedly displayed in Richmond, Virginia.
The mermaid was described as: “[the] upper part from the waist resembles a female, the lower, a fish. Its hair is long and of a dark sea blue. It carries a comb in one hand and sort of coral mirror in the other. It seems pleased when taken notice of, and utters a sort of wild yet not unusual sound.”
The first recorded (at least the first one I could find) landing of Americans upon Korean soil took place in 1855 when four American sailors deserted from a whaling ship and found themselves shipwrecked upon Korea’s shores. Korea had the reputation for being extremely hostile to foreigners - including shipwrecked victims - so the trepidation and fear these men must have had when they realized they would be forced to go ashore.
“Almost immediately they were discovered by the Koreans who tried to convince them to leave with gestures and signs, but once it was discovered that the Americans had no way to leave, were fed and well treated by the Koreans. The Americans were probably surprised at their initial treatment, and, like other shipwrecked survivors, were quickly confined to an area and guarded so as to prevent them from leaving or being molested by the native population, while waiting instructions from the Korean central government. Finally, after a month of captive care, orders were received and the four Americans were taken by horseback to the Manchurian border, and handed over to the Chinese magistrate there.”
They eventually, after much trouble, made their way to Shanghai and the American consul and were questioned about their adventures in Korea, but because they were “very unsophisticated young men” they were unable to provide much information other than they had seen no women while in Korea. Deemed as “not [having] profit[ed] much by their opportunities of travel;” they were sent back to their ship.
The article can be read here
19 Comments
What the hell was the Korean-American War of 1871, and where is the wikipedia article??
Curzon, Try this.
http://www.homeofheroes.com/wa.....sault.html
Your humble servant, p.a.
PS: I’m not responsible for the cheeseball muzak.
Right here.
So “yangyo” means western disturbance? Maybe I should change my nom de plume.
That has got to be a sailor’s worst nightmare…stranded in an exotic foreign country with no women in sight!
And before anyone accuses me of being an “orientalizing scummy expat,” no, I am not saying that Korea is exotic, or that its women are the main attraction, or blah blah blah whatever. It was just a joke, but I thought I’d better make that clear.
you know, I finally realized an obvious similarity between Russia and North Korea.
The Russians have been recently boasting of an impressive missile defense system.
North Koreans touted a nuke last year.
Both could have used that money on their economies.
Can you eat a missile?
By far, American influence on Korea has been the best foreign influence of all of Korea’s history.
You can conclude reasonably that PRC and USSR brought nothing but misery. Every nation they touched across the globe, I might add.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVA4kgVGmX0
you think people like this are going to rise-up, as if they were storming the Bastille, and hang Kim Jong Il’s neck on a Juche tower?
You’re dreaming.
If South Korea had stayed away from North Korea, and North Korean elites rebeled, NOT THE COMMON PEOPLE, China would have moved in, plain and simple.
Not US, Not South Korea,
China.
What do you think those troops across the Yalu and Tumen are for?
Sunshine policy is expensive and inefficient, but I don’t think there is an alternative.
For the first time in many, many years, South Korea showed some balls.
They denied the North Koreans rice. North Korea seems like they won’t honor the nuke deal on their own end. Bush lost nothing. He was just testing them out.
What will North Korea do now?
People who look like this in the youtube link, will never rise up on their own. The elite and the army eat, these people can’t even stand up straight.
oops. wrong place. oh well.
“Can you eat a missile?”
Literally, no. But, have you ever heard the expression, “Eat this!”?
Robert, this is a fascinating story. I wish someone can visit Bedford and find out if those sailors left anything written. I am sure they had talked about “strange land” to their neighbors and children.
This story, along with Hamil’s account, reinforces my belief that Chosun was just a giant Gulak managed by China. Chosun was not allowed to behave as an independent country but as a local region belonging to China.
As soon as foreigners arrive, they were isolated and sent to mainland China. China kept Chosun isolated and stupid. The only way to learn of the world was through Chinese books. No wonder Koreans spent entire life time devoted to learning those Chinese characters! The only way to knowledge and wisdom.
Even today, Koreans are “frogs in the well”. They cannot know about the real world. Sort of like African Natives. They rot in their nationalism and ignorance.
baduk, I was so amazed by your ignorance and racist post. The Quing dynasty in “China” at that time was ruled by the Manchus, not the Chinese Han. Confucianism from the Han culture worked as a religion in Chosun and affected Japan. “China” is relatively a modern concept, and there had been numerous ethnic groups struggling in the “China” land in history. Many ethnic groups and their cultures vanished in the land, and one ethnic group sometimes ruled the others. The Mongols ruled the “China” land under the name of Yuan, and, later, the Manchus rule the land, which is Quing. “Korean” people, who originated from somewhere in Siberia, have been living in the Korean Peninsula or even had their territory in “China” land and Japan in the Bakjade era and the Balhae era, for example. Koreans, although used to have different countries, kept their identity for thousands of years and have their own language and alphabets unlike some ethnic groups that had built dynasties and lost their cultural roots. Baduk, do you have your own language from your heritage?
I think it was a reasonable decision for the Chosun government to send the sailors to the Quing because there was an American consul in Shanghai. Should they have hold the sailors in Chosun indefinitely? About Confucianism, it worked in East Asia like in Christianity in the West. I see Christianity as a Italianized Judaism, and Christianity is the base of the Western Culture. People in East Asia read those text books in Chinese like some selected Europeans read Bible in Latin, and more people could read Bible in several European language including English, which are based on Lation.
Is it possible to be racist against one’s own race (ethnicity)? Just wondering.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/.....premacist/
“Deemed as ‘not [having] profit[ed] much by their opportunities of travel;’ they were sent back to their ship.”
That is the most beautiful part of the story. After struggling to stay alive, they finally make it back to “civilization” and, having not attempted to spurn the hospitality of the Koreans and act as spies, they were dismissed by the illuminati…
What most folks who’ve never been to a foreign land don’t realize is that some things cannot be described accurately. And the first exposure of Westerners to Korean Culture (and probably most other Asian cultures) is enough to disorient (if you’ll pardon the pun) even experienced travellers…
Baduk, you really need to delete the paradigms in your mind about Korea. China did not “run” Korea. Korea was best described as a “vassal state” to China. A feudal vassal is lord within his own realm. But he owes certain duties to his lord, primarily military service. In the Chinese-Korean relationship, the Korean king, as the “younger brother” owed his “elder brother” a tribute payment (every two years, I believe), and troops for military service if and when the emperor called for them. Likewise, the Lord, or “elder brother” in confucian terms, had a responsibility to send troops to aid his vassal, when his vassal asked for them: As they did in 1894 to save Seoul from advancing Tonghak and Righteous armies. Thus the Chinese handled Korean relations with us “hairy western barbarians”, prior to Korea’s own treaties with these nations, ergo: the turnover of the sailors to China. I am no expert on Korean history, but if memory serves, official Chinese delegations had the right to enter Korea, but did so along a certain road, to enter the city of Seoul near the present “Independence gate”, via a gate designated for the entry of such Chinese delegations. Non-official chinese contacts with Choseon were limited (I believe) to Kangwha island and one small sector of Incheon (Chemeulpeo), just as the Japanese were limited to one small sector of Busan.
The analogy between European feudalism and the relations between China and its subsidiary states in the pre-modern East Asian geopolitical system may be useful for correcting Baduk; but it’s anachronistic. The relationship of Korea to China was that of a “tributary” state, the system of whose privileges, rights and duties vis-a-vis the Chinese suzerain had similarities with the system of relations between a feudal lord and vassal, but also was sufficiently dissimilar that it should be understood as a conceptually distinct phenomenon. Perhaps the most important difference revolved around military service. The duty to make (at his own expense) both himself and his own vassals available to his overlord was perhaps the single most important or principal relation between a western European noble vassal (or vassal “state”) and his/its overlord. In the Chinese system this duty was greatly attentuated, at least in relation to states/peoples who were recognized as being distinct from the Chinese themselves. Korea certainly did not understand itself as being obligated to take up arms for China, and generally only did so under extreme duress, e.g., when forced by the Yuan to assist in the attempted invasion of Japan. The relationship between Korea and China was essentially a ceremonial, symbolically hieratic one, in which Korean kings received investiture from the Chinese emperor and relatively infrequent tributary missions back and forth periodically symbolically affirmed the hierarchical nature of the relationship. Otherwise, the two states had remarkably little to do with one another. There was no trade, except for the limited barter of goods permitted during tribute missions. And while China insisted that Korean sovereignity was legitimated by imperial prescript, it generally disclaimed responsibility for both Korean domestic and foreign affairs - (although the earlier non-Han dynasties, e.g., the Mongol Yuan, as noted above) were sometimes major exceptions.)
Sperwer, Good points! (doff plumed hat and render deep bow in Sperwer’s direction)