I just heard from one of our fellow contributors here at Frog in a Well that the National Library of Korea now offers limited support for a variety of browsers! Up until now anyone trying to use any browser except Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system would not get far beyond the search component of the national library – a source of endless frustration for many of us who do not use Windows.

However, one can now view at least some (I have not confirmed this for all digital resources) of the scanned texts at the library using the “new viewer” (신규뷰어).

Visit, for example, the fantastic collection of rare pre- and postwar (despite what the header says) newspapers found here. I am able to view these without problem on both Firefox and Safari browsers.

Using the old search interface from the home page, default links to the original images or 원문 of old books that have been scanned by the library will also open in these browsers with the multi-browser new viewer if there is an brown icon of a book with no “won” image in it.

Many resources, including many pre-1945 Japanese language materials, however, seem to be blocked outside of the National library and certain partner libraries¹ depending on the way one searches for that information.

I am very pleased to see this support and only hope they will also include support for printing (still IE only) and make sure that all their online resources will function. I also hope they will expand access to may items which clearly cannot be said to be protected by copyright from the colonial period, especially from the 1920s and earlier.

1. I get the message blaming copyright restrictions: 접속하신 PC(IP:140. … )에서는 본 자료를 이용하실 수 없습니다. 본 자료는 저작권 관계로 국립중앙도서관 및 협약을 체결한 도서관 내의 지정된 PC에서만 이용하실 수 있습니다. Anyone else get access outside of Korea or in Korea but not at the National Library? I don’t know what libraries are included among the 협약을 체결한 도서관 outside of Korea, but here is a list of libraries within Korea where one can apparently get access.

I have added two entries to the East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki here at Frog in a Well.

Yonsei University Central Library

I have so far only made a few reconnaissance trips to the library and checked out a few books so I don’t know all the tricks or secrets about making full use of the library’s collections but as my year in Korea progresses I’ll be updating the wiki entry.

Korean Film Archive

The film reference library at the Korean Film archive, located near Susaek station is really wonderful and the archivists have also done a fantastic job of putting together DVDs of some of the old classic movies, and providing access to movie scripts. The library was a bit of a pain to locate, even with the map found on their website, since the “Digital Media City” is still mostly an urban wasteland but I put detailed instructions on the wiki entry.

Have you been to these places? Do you see some mistakes on the wiki entry? Fix them! Have you been to other useful Korean libraries, archives, or museums? Add an entry! The EALA wiki will only be as good as the information that gets added to it and updated as time passes.

For some reason the Korea Times seems to be quite a decent source of history news these days, so in the absence of a more heavyweight post, here’s a round up of articles I’ve come across in the last week or so:

A couple of weeks ago the Korean Supreme Court released a bundle of court rulings from the early colonial period for the first time. The rulings date from 1912-1914 and the article notes how at that time custom still had an important influence on how the law was executed:

The court acknowledged concubines and gave supreme rights to the eldest sons of families. A person’s legal capacity was decided not by his or her age but by whether he or she had the intelligence to determine gains and losses.

Last week it was announced that a number of Chosŏn royal seals are missing, having been lost by various Korean museums. This is really not good for Korean museum PR:

The Board of Audit and Inspection also said that the surface of a royal seal made for the concubine of King Sonjo rusted away and a turtle-shaped seal, made of jade for the wife of King Sonjo, had been destroyed.

They said that every one of the of 316 seals owned by the National Palace Museum of Korea had been damaged in some way.

Two wooden ships found off the coast of China last year have turned out to be extremely rare examples of Koryŏ flat-bottomed wooden ships.

“It provides evidence that flat-bottom ships could sail as far as Shandong Province. Flat-bottom is a unique feature of ancient Korean ships unlike Chinese ships that had relatively pointy-shaped bottoms,” Choi Hang-soon, professor at the Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at Seoul National University, told The Korea Times.

“It seems the Koryo ships arrived in the Chinese port, and had some big repairs there,” said Choi, who participated in the international academic conference on the ancient ships last week in Penglai.

And finally… A KT student guest columnist lauds the philanthropic attitude of Chosŏn dynasty sŏnbi (Confucian scholar-officials). This is something that interests me a lot as I’m planning to do some research on the ‘gift economy’ in Chosŏn Korea. However, I must admit that I can’t help being a bit put off an article when I see empty catchphrases like ‘sŏnbi spirit’ being thrown around and I’m not entirely convinced about the idea of seeing members of the exclusive and exploitative yangban class as moral models for our age, however philanthropic they may have been. Actually I could criticise numerous aspects of that column, but that would seem rather misanthropic of me…

Owen has posted some great links on the study of pre-modern Korean history. In one of his postings he mentioned the National History Compilation Committee (국사편찬위원회 國史編纂委員會). I poked around the site when Owen linked to it but had no idea they had great modern materials as well.

A Japanese friend of mine just returned to Japan and Waseda after spending a week here collection some colonial period materials. He was hoping he could buy a copy of Yun Ch’i-ho’s original Chinese/English diary while he was here which he had heard was out of print and only now available in Korean. I went used book shopping with him but we had no luck. However, after his return, he discovered—and was kind enough to tell me—that the entire diary is online via the 국사편찬위원회 website.

To find this diary, simply go to the history.go.kr website, enter 尹致昊日記 or 윤치호일기 in the search box and you will find three hits. The first hit will lead you to a volume index, followed by a year and month index where you can read his entries directly online. Whoever compiled it was also nice enough to mark proper nouns as “People” or “Places.” If you are not sure what kind of thing one of the specially colored words are, simply hover your mouse over it and it will tell you whether it is a person, place, etc.

Yesterday I paid a visit to the Korea Foundation’s Cultural Center (한국국제교류재단 문화센터). The center features gallery space, seminar and movie rooms, and a lending library. I also noticed at the center a notice listing times for free Korean lessons. The library is a small but very nice place to visit if you are in Seoul, don’t have easy access to a large research library in the city, and want to read or check out works about Korea, especially in non-Korean languages. There are half a dozen seats, a long sofa, some computers to access the library catalog, and a few thousand volumes available. They also have a collection of recent journals related to Korean studies, a small reference section, a Korean music collection, and a small collection of DVDs of Korean movies.

Full members of the center can check out two books at a time from the library for two weeks (plus one renewal) and can take advantage of their inter-library loan system to get works they don’t have access to. However, in order to become a member you have to be in Korea more than a month, make a 10,000 deposit for the period of membership, and unfortunately cannot get membership immediately on your first visit. According to a librarian there, you have to wait two days or so for your membership to come through.

The cultural center also offers other regular events such as Korean and non-Korean movies, art and lecture events, etc. The website has a lot of this information and members get a newsletter. However, the library website is not well designed. If you are unfortunate enough to be using web browsers other than Internet Explorer or a non-Windows machine, you may have trouble signing up as a member through their online form (JavaScript Issues), and cannot easily access the library’s pages or their search engine. I hope the center will improve their website in the future and make it function under standard’s compliant browsers.

It is unfortunate that excellent resources like these are often not well known. I remember a very similar small-scale international library in Yokohama, located a dozen or so floors up Landmark Tower that had very few visitors. This made it an ideal as a quiet place to study and get internet access in the middle of the city and I often studied there while a student at IUC. I imagine that there are many visitors to Korea who might be staying or living in the country for some time who may not know that there are these kinds of resources available.

Location: 1st floor of the JoonAng Ilbo Building five minutes walk from Exit 9 of the City Hall Station on Line 1 and 2.
Opening Times: Monday to Saturday 10:30 to 18:00 (until 21:00 on Wednesdays)