By Andrei Lankov
The Korean English-language press was born in the 1890s. Foreigners were allowed to settle in Seoul only from the early 1880s, and in a few years time Korea had a small but growing expat community, largely consisting of missionaries, businessmen and diplomats.
They needed a press in English, the language that already was the primary medium of international communications in this part of the world.
The first English language periodical to deal with Korea and things Korean had a rather predictable name ― Morning Calm. However, it was not published in Korea, as one might expect. Morning Calm was actually printed in London, some 10,000 kilometers away.
Morning Calm was launched by Anglican missionaries in July 1890, and this event marked the birth of the English-language press in Korea. Initially, Morning Calm was conceived as a monthly, but from 1896 it became a quarterly publication.
Obviously, the missionaries had some problems with printing office, so the articles of the first issues were sent to London for type-setting and printing, and then the final copies were shipped back across the globe. This was both expensive and time-consuming: it took two or three months for a letter from Seoul to reach London.
The content of Morning Calm dealt largely with the local missionary activities. In a sense, it was a missionary newsletter, but despite such a moderate approach (or perhaps because of it), Morning Calm proved to be a remarkably resilient project.
It survived until 1939 when, on the eve of World War II, all foreign publications were banned by the colonial authorities.
Merely two years after the inception of Morning Calm, Korea acquired a second English-language periodical. The Korean Repository, published by the Methodist missionaries, was far more than merely a missionary newsletter.
The Korean Repository strived to become a scholarly and political journal which discussed Korea-related issues, and its editors reached this goal.
For example, the first issue of The Korean Repository, which appeared in January 1892, contained substantive articles on the history of the Korean writing system and the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592-98.
Taking the then current political situation into consideration, the latter topic was by no means purely academic ― indeed, in later years The Korean Repository often sharply criticized Japanese colonial policy in Korea.
The Korean Repository continued until late 1898. Then briefly it was reborn as a small weekly bulletin, but by June of the following year it ceased publication for good. By that time, however, Korea had acquired its first English-language daily (well, almost daily) newspaper.
This was the Independent, a newspaper whose name is now known to every educated Korean. Many believe that the Independent was the first Korean newspaper.
This is not quite the case, since it had a number of predecessors, but its decisive impact on Korean journalism is undeniable. However, the Independent was a bilingual paper, published in both English and Korean.
The Independent was founded by Seo Jae-pil (Dr. Philip Jaisohn), a man whose life was quite extraordinary even for his extraordinary times.
At a young age he joined the radical ``Westernizers,'' took part in an unsuccessful coup, fled to the United States, earned a doctoral degree in medicine, married a daughter of the founding father of the U.S. postal system, and accepted U.S. citizenship.
In 1896 Seo came back to Korea, full of grand plans. His stay in his home country was short, but within those two and half years he managed to create the first Korean political party and launched the Independent, the first private daily in Korea.
He closely cooperated with the a number of Western ex-pats, including H. G. Appenzeller, a formidable Methodist minister who also was a publisher of The Korean Repository (for a while, the Independent used printing facilities provided by The Korean Repository).
The first issue of the Independent rolled off the press on April 7, 1896. It had four pages, one of which was in English.
The English subtitle described the periodical as a ``Journal of Korean Commerce, Politics, Literature, History and Art,'' but the word ``journal'' in this case clearly leaned to the French and meant ``newspaper'': for the Independent was initially published three times a week.
The Independent continued as a bilingual paper until 1898 when the English and Korean editions were separated and became two different papers.
The politics of the Independent always worried both reactionaries in the court and the pro-Japanese faction, so the paper was often harassed by the government.
In May 1898 Seo had to leave the country, and in September 1899 the English-language edition of the Independent was closed down. The Korean edition lasted a bit longer, until December of the same year.
However, the demise of the Independent did not mean the end of the English-language press in Korea. Actually, from 1899 and to the present day there have only been two short periods when Korea had no English language publications.
Such periodicals even persisted during the period of colonial rule, sometimes to the great dismay of the colonial overlords.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea," which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.