Opinion - The Korea Times

Korean excellence in education

By Mark PetersonKorea has a well-established reputation for having one of the best education systems in the world, but I have learned a new dimension of that excellence on my recent trip to Korea. I have been invited, of late, to give lectures to a variety of groups ― some breakfast groups, some lunchtime groups ― and coupled with lectures I give to universities, government organizations and private companies, I'm starting to see a picture of how education in Korea is life-long and unlike other countries in the world.The picture of how truly pervasive educational objectives are in Korea has become all the more clear to me when I tried recently to set up some lectures for a Korean friend visiting America. I, for my part, have been the beneficiary of giving numerous lectures in Korea, and I thought I could do the same for my friend in America. He has an interesting message, one that Americans, in the right setting, enjoy hearing. But the bottom line is that there just weren't that many venues that we could find. There are schools, but that is difficult to set up; there are Rotary Clubs

Oct 27, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Teaching sijo in America

By Mark PetersonI wrote last time about the Sejong Cultural Society based in Chicago and their annual fundraiser. Today I want to write about their annual teachers' workshop for American teachers to learn how to teach sijo in American classrooms. The workshop was a huge success with teachers attending from all across America.The daylong seminar was held in Indianapolis, Indiana, and co-sponsored by Indiana University. There were teachers from California, Maryland, Georgia ― east coast, west coast ― and all around the Midwest. Teachers were given sessions on various aspects of sijo, were taught how to write sijo, and shown comparisons to Chinese jueju (quatrain poetry) and Japanese haiku. The culmination of the day's activities was a sijo-writing contest for the teachers.The Sejong Cultural Society deserves great credit for planting sijo in America. The sijo is the format, a three-line poem, but the language is English. For 11 years now the Sejong Cultural Society has sponsored an online contest for American high school students (although there are some primary school students who ent

Oct 13, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Sejong Cultural Society

By Mark PetersonThere is a wonderful group of people in Chicago that have created an organization for the promotion of Korean culture. They are called the Sejong Cultural Society. Their purpose is to promote Korean culture in the United States. They engage in three activities, primarily ― a music competition, an essay contest, and a sijo writing contest. It is the last item, the sijo contest that has brought them into my realm of interest and activity.For several years, off and on, I have been one of their judges in their sijo writing contest. David McCann, my “seonbae” from Harvard, has also been one of their judges. They have an essay writing contest where a short story translated from Korean is often the kind of subject matter ― that brings the Korean cultural element into the essay. And they have a music competition to encourage young musicians ― Korean-Americans, and otherwise ― to compete in violin and piano. But it is the sijo contest, and the society's sijo workshop, that has brought me into their work.The music contest and the essay contest are for precollege stu

Oct 6, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

A tribute to Prof. Song June-ho

By Mark PetersonLast week I wrote a tribute to the memory of professor Ed Wagner and I wrote of his contribution to Korean Studies and particularly his use of jokbo (genealogies) in his research. Today, I must write a tribute to his colleague and collaborator in Korean historical research, Song June-ho.Song was a professor at at Jeonbuk National University in Jeonju and for a while after he retired, he had an honorary position at Wonkwang University in Iksan. Like Wagner, Song was a specialist in the social history of the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom, and in jokbo, and he worked with Wagner on creating a master index of the 14,607 men who passed the highest civil service exam, the munkwa. And like Wagner, Song knew the historical value of the documents known as jokbo.Both knew that the popular views of jokbo as “compromised,” “inaccurate” “falsified” were not a correct interpretation of the documents. He knew this because he used a jokbo like any other historical document ― data therefrom had to be cross-checked and verified. He used the jokbo really n

Sep 29, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Legacy of Prof. Ed Wagner

By Mark PetersonIn writing of late in this column, which I call the “Frog Outside the Well,” I have touched on the subject of Korean jokbo (genealogies) a few times. I have had feedback from this column and from my YouTube channel that Korean jokbo are unreliable in that commoners and slaves have bought their way into established genealogies.This calls for looking at the work of Professor Ed Wagner who was the first to get a degree in Korean history in America and who taught for his whole career at Harvard University. Indeed, he is called the “Father of Korean Studies” in America.Perhaps he is best-known in Korea for his expertise in Korean jokbo. Indeed, he was one of the first to use jokbo as a historical resource at a time when Korean scholars, for the most part, ignored jokbo and decried their inaccuracy and worth as reliable historical documents. But Wagner showed quite convincingly that, like any other source document, it could be cross-checked and evaluated, case-by-case, as to the accuracy and the worth of the document. And he found that jokbo were ver

Sep 22, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

More on eunuchs

By Mark PetersonA few weeks ago I wrote of my visit in 1977 to the last living eunuch in Korea and I wrote of his jokbo (genealogical book) and how it showed adopted eunuch children retained their natal family surname. The article stirred some interest among our readers and as a result, several questions came to me and I received several requests to write more about eunuchs.One reader commented on a house that still stands in Seoul that was described as a eunuch's house. That reader, Jacco Zwetsloot, showed me the house tucked in behind the Japanese embassy, near Gyeongbok Palace. We walked around the outside; it appeared empty and deserted. There were two shops on the street side that had been remodeled to appear new. But to get a good look at the house we were able to go into the high-rise building next to it, and look down on it and even take a photograph. It didn't look to me like a eunuch's home, from what I have read about eunuch's homes.The thing that I have read is that eunuch homes had several inner gates leading to a protected inner courtyard where the eunuch's wife and chi

Aug 25, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

UNESCO and 'jokbo'

By Mark PetersonLast time I wrote about the conference I attended in Andong on “naebang kasa” and the desire of the participants to apply for UNESCO Memory of the World recognition. At the conference, quite unexpectedly, I ran into the head of the Gyeongju Choe lineage, a man who lives in Gyeongju. Although Gyeongju and Andong are quite far apart, they are both in conservative, most-Confucian North Gyeongsang Province. And the programs at the Academy for the Advancement of Korean Studies attracts people from all over the province. Still, I was surprised to see Mr. Choe there.He came up to me during the break and said he was attending the conference, not because he was particularly interested in naebang kasa, but that he was interested in seeing me! He said he had an idea to discuss with me: Should we begin to pursue UNESCO Memory of the World recognition for Korean jokbo?His proposal took my breath away. I hadn't thought of the idea, but immediately I thought, yes, yes, yes! That's exactly what we should do!Korea, arguably ― and I think we can prove this statistically ― h

Aug 14, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

'Destroyed' surnames

By Mark PetersonAs a contrast to the names that have survived in Korea for 1,500 years and more, there were names that did not survive. I've been writing about how remarkable, and even unusual, the Korean surname situation is ― specifically, the concentration of just a few surnames. Five surnames ― Kim, Yi (Lee), Pak, Choe and Jeong (Chung, Jung) ― make up 55 percent of Korea's population. I have previously emphasized how unusual this is and how it is one of the solid evidences that Korean history has been marked by stability and peace.However, there have been some exceptions. There are surnames that have not survived. But this fact does not contradict the thesis (that Korean history should be seen as remarkably peaceful, and should not be characterized as war-torn and unstable), but rather, the “destroyed” surnames illustrate the thesis.I have offered before that the Kims of the Gaya Kingdom survived very well in the Silla Kingdom after the Silla took over Gaya. Kim Yu-sin, the great general of the unification of Silla who conquered Baekje and Goguryeo, was a grandson of

Jul 28, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Last eunuch's surname

By Mark PetersonWhen I was a student in Korea in 1977 I met a man introduced to me as the last living eunuch from the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom. At that point, I understood there was one other living eunuch as well, but the man I met was in his 60s and he had become a eunuch and was a young child in the last-gasp years of Joseon before 1910.I met him and his wife at his home on the outskirts of Seoul in a rural area at the foot of a hillside that climbed upward behind his home. He seemed in good health but complained of back pain.I'm thinking of him now in this series of articles I've been writing here on Korean surnames, because the thing that struck me most about meeting a living eunuch was the revelation about his family and ancestors. He had left his natal home ― usually there is a payment involved ― or in blunt terms, he had been sold into the eunuch home ― but he had not left his surname behind. He was adopted to his eunuch father and he succeeded a long line genealogically, so to speak, of eunuch ancestors.Point number one: Eunuchs lived in families consisting of a eunuch with

Jul 17, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

The lesser surnames

By Mark PetersonThe previous two installments in my “Frog Outside the Well” series have been about the dominance of the surnames Kim, Lee and Park. Today I want to look at the lesser names, the obscure names of Korea.Korean genealogical specialists write about the “great surnames,” the middle-sized surname groups, and the obscure or small-clan surname groups. There is a tendency toward prizing the larger family groups ― after all, Kim, Lee and Park were all royal names, literally, the names of kings in Korea's past. And there tends to be a devaluing of the lesser clans. The clans in the middle are recognized as worthy members of the nation, but the small clans are sometimes demeaned.There is a thing called the “seven low-class names” or the “10 low-class names”. Here “low-class” is my translation of “sangnom,” a word that was used more commonly when I first came to Korea, but now is almost a swear word or forbidden word. The list is of these so-called low-class names and they are often despised or at least snicke

Jul 7, 2019By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Read more

Korean excellence in education

Teaching sijo in America

Sejong Cultural Society

A tribute to Prof. Song June-ho

Legacy of Prof. Ed Wagner

More on eunuchs

UNESCO and 'jokbo'

'Destroyed' surnames

Last eunuch's surname

The lesser surnames

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