The Korea Times

Pak Seon - A scapegoat for regicide

Gwanghwamun in the early 1900s / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffKorea in the mid-1890s was rapidly changing. The 1894-95 First Sino-Japanese War had ended Chinese dominance in the kingdom's politics and replaced it with Japanese reforms and interference. Nowhere were the changes more evident than in Seoul, as people from all over the country sought opportunities. People with initiative, courage and ability were able to find lucrative positions with the various new businesses, government organizations and industries being developed.However, not all opportunities were legal. Seoul was awash in crime, and walking the streets at night could not only deprive a person of their hard-earned money but also their life. Many of the perpetrators were from the eastern provinces ― the northerners tended to sympathize with the Russians, while the southerners tended to align themselves more with the Japanese. One of these southerners was Pak Seon.Pak Seon was a young street thug from the Fusan (modern Busan) area who specialized in assuring debts were paid. According to one source, he “wa

Oct 10, 2021By Robert Neff

Opinion

Queen Min's death and Joseon's failed future

Gyeongbok Palace in 2016. Hyangwonjeong is in the foreground and Geoncheonggung is in the background. / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffPurported to be the only authentic image of Queen Min (with her servant) in the mid-1890s. / Harrisburg Daily IndependentIn the late 19th century, Korea, like most of the world, was a man's country. Everything centered on and revolved around men. Women were usually invisible in men's writing, but when they were described in newspapers and magazines, they were portrayed as belonging to their husbands or assisting male counterparts. Fortunately, not all Western journalist who visited Korea were men.There were several women who wrote about Korea and provide us with an interesting perspective of the country during the late 19th century. One of these women was Canadian-born Margherita Arlina Hamm who traveled to Korea and did something few men could ― she wrote rather personally and in depth about the Korean queen.According to Hamm, Queen Min was “the most interesting of all the Asiatic royal heads, having more intelligence, diplomacy, beauty an

Oct 9, 2021By Robert Neff

Queen Min's death and Joseon's failed future

Opinion

Adventurous eating in Joseon

A young man eating his dinner in the early 1900s / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffWhen Sumner Vinton and his wife traveled to Japan and Korea in 1918, they found themselves under strict surveillance. The world was still at war and visitors were few. It was only natural that they were suspected of being German agents and were questioned unmercifully. Vinton wrote:“The Japanese secret service is indefatigable and unescapable. I do not remember having to tell the color of my grandfather's eyes or the age of my mother's stepsister, but every other detail of personal and family history was mercilessly uncovered in the exhaustive inquiries to which we were subjected at each stop.”Although the Japanese secret police were polite, Vinton was convinced that they held “a constant suspicion” of him and his wife ― especially when they discovered that the Americans' purpose for traveling was to take pictures for their religious publications.It is a shame that Vinton did not describe the train ride from Fusan (Busan) to Seoul and then on to Pyongyang. Two years earlier,

Oct 3, 2021By Robert Neff

Opinion

Joseon's first encounter with a 'wheel'

A Korean officer on his own 'wheel' in the late 19th century / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffThe wheel has been described as one of the greatest inventions of humanity and has been around for millennia. Who invented the wheel and when are not known, but the first known encounter Koreans had with a Yankee-style bicycle “wheel” occurred in the winter of 1884-85.On Dec. 27, 1884, U.S. Minister to Korea Lucius Foote left Jemulpo (now part of modern Incheon) for Seoul. He was accompanied by Captain McGlensey (of the American warship the U.S.S. Ossipee) and five of his crew, including 26-year-old Lieutenant Philip V. Lansdale.Upon arriving in Seoul, they were presented to the king, who ― according to a contemporary naval magazine ― “spoke of the United States in the highest terms, and thanked the party for the visit. They were also presented to his royal highness, the Prince (12 years of age), who has a miniature court of his own.” The naval party remained in Seoul for a couple of weeks, providing protection for the American minister and his staff, before retu

Sep 26, 2021By Robert Neff

Opinion

Horace Allen's arrival in Joseon

A Westerner and his Korean ponies in the late 19th century / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffHorace N. Allen, an American missionary, arrived in Jemulpo on Sept. 20, 1884, at age 26, aboard the English steamship Nanzing. He had come to Korea ― leaving his wife and infant son in Shanghai ― in search of opportunity and adventure as a doctor.Allen's initial descriptions of Korea were far from flattering and it would be easy to blame this negativity on his journey from Shanghai to Korea, which had been a rough one. While in the Korea Strait, the Nanzing encountered a powerful typhoon causing him to become violently seasick ― his ship survived relatively undamaged but other ships were not so lucky.In his diary, he wrote:“Arrived in [Jemulpo]. This is a motley place of slab shanties, mud huts, sheds and bush earth. The Japanese here also are in the ascendancy and (have) the choicest place. They also have a fine Consulate. Mr. C.H. Cooper has just built a nice little white building to be used as the American Consulate. The Chinese are wisely building a fine house of brick which th

Sep 25, 2021By Robert Neff

Opinion

Hunting tigers in Manchuria in 1912

Sontag Hotel in Seoul, circa 1910. Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffIn March 1912, Sontag Hotel was the place to be in Seoul. Some described it as a place of political intrigue ― backrooms haunted with shady characters plotting anarchy and unrest. Others, like Roy Chapman Andrews, saw it as a place to begin a great adventure. It was filled with gold miners from the Western-owned concessions in the northern part of the peninsula. In fact, according to Andrews, “Seoul resembled nothing so much as an American mining town amid oriental surroundings.”Andrews was seeking adventure and had selected to stay at Sontag Hotel while he organized an expedition party to explore the Baekdu Mountain ― the tallest mountain on the Korean peninsula and one often associated with mysticism and adventure.Andrews observed that “one did very much as one pleased [in Korea,] for the Japanese had taken over the country so recently that there were very few restrictions.” Despite this claim, he still sought and obtained permission from the Japanese authorities. The Japanese government

Sep 19, 2021By Robert Neff

Opinion

Hunting 'devilfish' in Korea in 1912

A close-up view of a whale stranded purportedly in Korea in 1946-47. Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffIn February 1912, an American arrived at a small Japanese whaling station near Ulsan, Korea. He was 28 years old, a naturalist and an explorer, and possibly the inspiration for Indiana Jones; he was Roy Chapman Andrews.Andrews came to Korea in search of the Koku Kujira, or “devilfish,” that were said to haunt the coasts of the Korean peninsula. He was convinced that the Koku Kujira were, in fact, gray whales. These whales were once encountered in great numbers off the western coast of North America, but were hunted so extensively that by 1870 they were nearly, if not completely, extinct. Andrews convinced his employer ― the American Museum of Natural History in the United States ― to allow him to travel to Korea on a great scientific mission “to rediscover a supposedly extinct species.”The whaling station, situated in a bay sheltered by tree-less hills, would be his home for the next six weeks. Judging from Andrews, the whaling vessels at the station were p

Sep 18, 2021By Robert Neff

Opinion

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (II)

Ironing clothes in the late 19th century / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffA 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.” Horace Allen, an American missionary who arrived in 1884, echoed her sentiment when he wrote that “the musical rat-tat-tap of the Korean laundry was one of [the] most common nocturnal sounds” heard while he lived in Seoul.The method of ironing was rather tedious. After the clothes were washed and dried at the river or stream, they were often stiffened and given more body with a starch made out of rice. They were then taken back home and, in the evening ― after dinner was made and a countless number of other chores were completed ― laid out on a flat board and then pounded with laundry sticks. These laundry sticks were described as

Sep 12, 2021By Robert Neff

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (II)

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (I)

Opinion

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (I)

Korean women do laundry in the early 1900s / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffWhen 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 Korean woman was doing laundry.Before the clothing could be washed, it often had to be taken apart and allowed to seep in lye, or water that had been used to wash rice or beans or boiled with barley. After the clothes had soaked for a while, the real labor began ― rinsing and washing in clean water. In the countryside, finding a place to do laundry was relatively easy in the spring and summer and may have even been somewhat pleasurable to be away from the eyes of their husbands or the sharp tongues of their mothers-in-law.Bishop, who traveled extensively around the Korean Peninsula, claimed that “every bro

Sep 11, 2021By Robert Neff

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (I)

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (II)

Opinion

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (II)

Prisoners wait to be tried in Jemulpo (modern Incheon) circa 1902. / Robert Neff CollectionBy Robert NeffOn 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 his assistant, James Scott.Scott was “courteously received” by Hong Sun-hak, the prefect of Incheon, who assured his guest that “he was prepared to inflict punishment there and then in [his] presence.” Scott suggested that it might be well to ascertain conjointly the facts of the case and hear any defense the accused might have to make.” Apparently this suggestion pleased Hong and he immediately began making preparations for a real trial and not just a display of punishment.The trial took place in the prefect's hall which, located on a low ridge overlooking the town, was “a v

Sep 5, 2021By Robert Neff

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (II)

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (I)

Robert Neff

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Pak Seon - A scapegoat for regicide

Queen Min's death and Joseon's failed future

Adventurous eating in Joseon

Joseon's first encounter with a 'wheel'

Horace Allen's arrival in Joseon

Hunting tigers in Manchuria in 1912

Hunting 'devilfish' in Korea in 1912

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (II)

Joseon women and their manifest destiny (I)

Police brutality in 19th-century Joseon (II)

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