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Opinion

Blogs

Thu, September 16, 2021 | 19:56

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (II)

A frequent observation by Western visitors to Korea in the late 19th century was the constant sound of tapping coming from most houses in the middle of the night. This was the sound of women ironing their clothing. According to Isabella Bird Bishop, the only sound that broke the stillness of the night in Seoul was the “regular beat of the laundry sticks.”

2021-09-12 09:22

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (I)

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (I)

When Isabella Bird Bishop, an intrepid British travel writer, visited Korea in the mid-1890s, she declared that Korean women were slaves to laundry and that it was to be their “manifest destiny” as long as their husbands wore white. According to George Gilmore - one of the first American English teachers here in the late 1880s - the “most wearing and incessant labor” for a Ko...

2021-09-11 09:14

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (II)

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (II)

On Oct. 27, 1884, three policemen accused of badly beating a British citizen were put on trial in Incheon. This may have been the first mixed court in Korea involving a British citizen. Although he had insisted that he would attend, W.G. Aston, the British Consul-General, decided not to (possibly because the Korean governor was not presiding over the trial) and instead sent h...

2021-09-05 08:39

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (I)

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (I)

In the summer of 1884, the streets of the fledgling port of Jemulpo (part of modern Incheon) were awash with violence. British Vice-Consul William Richard Carles reported that clashes between knife-wielding Japanese residents and Koreans were an “almost daily occurrence and on every occasion hundreds of Japanese have hurried to the spot ready to take the part of their country...

2021-09-04 09:29

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (II)

Charlotte Christine: shipwrecked on Ulleung Island in 1873

On Aug. 27, 1873, the Charlotte Christine, a German barque, departed Vladivostok bound for Chefoo (modern Yantai), China. We don't know much about the ship save that it was relatively small (286 tons) and apparently arrived in the Far East the previous year or so, mainly transporting goods, including cotton, along the Chinese coast.

2021-08-29 09:10

The difficult choice

Photographs of Korea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are often graced with the images of children. In many pictures, the children are accessories - used as a scale to indicate the size of the object or to breathe life into a rather dull image of a building or artifact.

2021-08-28 09:49

The Argonaut's arrival in Korea in 1791

One of the earliest Western attempts to establish trade with Korea took place in the summer of 1791 by the English-flagged Argonaut, commanded by Captain James Colnett. The 400-ton ship had a crew of 19 men (excluding the captain) as well as Thomas Beal, a Prussian and the younger brother of one of the ship's owners, and a Chinese man, “smuggled on board who pretended to be a...

2021-08-22 09:10

Diplomat on the run

In 1888, the vice consul in Shanghai for the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway was an Austrian businessman named S. Krips. In the past, countries that did not have diplomats in a distant port would sometimes assign consular positions to citizens of their own country or to trusted people of foreign nationality, usually businesspeople.

2021-08-21 09:15

Yanks welcomed on their arrival in newly liberated Korea

On Sept. 8, 1945, American soldiers began arriving in Incheon. Everett Shipley informed his parents in a letter home that his unit arrived in the port at about 3 p.m. and were greeted by the Japanese who provided them with trucks and other logistical support to off-load their equipment.

2021-08-15 08:26

An emperor delivers 'a Great Declaration' of Aug. 15, 1945

On Aug. 14, 1945, Koreans and Japanese on the Korean Peninsula were surprised by notices in the newspaper and radio broadcasts that on the following day, at noon, there would be “a great declaration.”

2021-08-14 09:53

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