Doubts over Queen Myeonseong's photo

By Lee Min-hyung

Cover of "The Passing of Korea" by Homer B. Hulbert

The widely known photograph of Queen Myeongseong, wife of Emperor Gojong, may not be genuine, a global electronic newsletter says.

The Korean-American Science and Technology News (KASTN) said in its March 18 edition that a history expert had questioned the photo’s authenticity, which many other experts believe is genuine.

Kim Dong-jim, president of the Hulbert Memorial Society in Seoul, had made the claim, according to the KASTN.

The controversial photo first appeared on the cover of the book “The Passing of Korea” by the late Homer B. Hulbert, published in 1906.

Kim said there was no explicit mention of the queen relating to the photo. But when Hulbert displayed a photo of King Gojong in the same book, he captioned it as King Gojong.

The queen was assassinated in 1895 when photography did not exist in Korea. All the available photos of King Gojong’s court were taken around 1905.

What made the photo unreliable was that the queen revealed her feet in it, which was almost impossible to imagine during the period, Kim argued.