Crusader for Korea

Blog about my experiences as an intern for the Hulbert Memorial Society.

[homerhulbert]

The Palaces of Seoul

I was invited to a traditional Korean music show this week by one of DJ's friends, who works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  I went with another person from work in the afternoon and we visited a few historical locations first since they were close to the location of the event.  The first stop was the Palace that King Gojong grew up in, where his father ruled as the regent until Gojong came of suitable age to rule.  It was a big compound but it likely was bigger in the past before the city started expanding and destroying old buildings.

Down the street from the palace of Gojong's father, was Changdeokgung the main royal palace.  It was the palace that most of the late Joseon Kings used and while large is not the largest royal palace compound in Seoul.  The other royal palace compounds in Seoul, that I have at least been to, include Gyeongbokgung and Deoksugung.  Gyeongbokgung is the largest palace compound but was destroyed by the Japanese and was not rebuilt until after Gojong passed away.  Deoksugung is the newest palace built in the western style by Gojong in 1907.  It was a beautiful palace but pales in comparison to Changdeokgung as the buildings and gardens were much smaller and less ornate than the ones of Changdeokgung.  After a quick tour of Changdeokgung, we headed off to the Korean Folk Music event across the street.

-Some of the main buildings of Changdeokgung

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/ATR/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264337

-Information about Gyeongbokgung Palace

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/ATR/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264316

-Information about Deoksugung Palace

The event was preceded by a short reception where food and drinks were served and I got a chance to meet with the person who invited me and get to know my coworker a little better.  I did not realize how important an event it was until I bumped into the Australian ambassador and exchanged greetings.  It seems they several embassies were invited to the event so that the ambassadors could learn about a bit of Korean culture and history.  The show itself was not very long, but it included a lot of amazing traditional music.  The traditional music is starting to become less popular as time goes on so the government and universities are working together to sponsor events to help people learn and appreciate Korean Folk music.  It was a very different event than I imagined it to be, but it was a great educational experience as I learned a lot about Korean history and culture that I did not know before.

-Picture from one of the performances at the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkM_LXUCMeA

-A traditional Korean folk song, much like the ones performed at the event I went to.

Outside of that, it was a quiet week in the office.  I finished the first collection of letters that I was working with, marking the completion of all the available letters from 1883-1888.  In 1888, he went back home to get married and spent a few months in the United States and Canada before returning to Korea to start his next few years of work at the Royal English School.

[homerhulbert]

A Pioneer in Education

As Hulbert spends more time in Korea, he is becoming more attached to Korea and the Korean people.  His work with his school has helped him a great deal in this regard.  The school he was employed at was the first public school in Korea funded by the government.  They taught a multitude of subjects there including geography and English, with more complex topics being introduced later on to challenge and stimulate their intellectual growth.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2017/05/113_66731.html

-A short history of English schools in Seoul.

This school was a great step in the right direction for the Korean people as it allowed people not from the ruling class to finally get an education.  Hulbert and the other teachers that came with him recognized that their students were not all from the same backgrounds, but they did not discriminate between their students for that.  All they cared about was their willingness to learn and how much they achieved in the classroom.

http://ancientkoreacivilization.weebly.com/social-classes.html

-Overview of Joseon Korea’s class system.

They encountered some opposition from the ruling class as many held anti-foreigner sentiments.  This was because the faction friendly to foreigners was severely weakened after a failed  coup in 1884.  Hulbert and the others persevered trying to not be caught up in the petty court politics that plagued Korea at the time.  Eventually they had to get involved because of threats to their school like reduced hours and budget problems.  He fought back getting the original school hours back and getting more funds allowing them to take on more students.

http://www.theedutimes.com/ebse_ed/j_view-1.php?code=Junior_History_books§ion=view&page=1&number=58&lang=2&part=j

-A brief summary of the Gapsin Coup of 1884

-Gapsin Coup Painting

Hulbert fought for what he believed in just as many people do today.  The governmental waste and bureaucratic red tape that plagued his school in the beginning was overcome from repeated and successful opposition to the anti-foreigner officials allowing the school to flourish.  In the United States, South Korea, and many other countries around the world people are standing up to corruption and trying to make their countries as great as they possibly can.  The South Koreans were able to oust a corrupt leader because of their repeated efforts, a little different from Hulbert's work trying to protect his school, but both are successful cases of opposition to a corrupt government.

-One of many protests against South Korea’s former president Park Geun-hye.

Many of Hulbert's letters that I worked with this week focused on his school and his fight against the corrupt officials.  As he spends more time in Korea, he is becoming more attached and is slowly becoming a champion for the Korean people.  This time he helped with public education, who knows what more he could do the longer he spends in Seoul.

[homerhulbert]

The Beauty of Hangul (한글)

​ As I read more of Hulbert's letters I feel like I am getting to know him fairly intimately. He writes a lot to his family back in the United States as well as to his fiancée which has allowed me to see how well he and his family are connected. This week I finished the last of the letters from 1886 and began the letters from 1887, finally seeing the end of his first year in Korea. He has done fairly well in Korea so far and has not had any trouble adjusting to his new home.

His initial curiosity and intrigue reminded me of my first time to Korea in 2016. We both were captured by the beauty of the Korean mountains and countryside. While Hulbert's trip to Seoul from Chemulpo, now Incheon, was a lot longer than mine we were both able to take in the sights as we approached Seoul. He did this 130 years ago making the sights that he saw very different since Seoul at the time was a city of merely 300,000 and had walls! Regardless of what we saw on our way to Seoul and in our first few days in Korea, we both came to love and appreciate the city in our win ways.

His love for the city and its surroundings come through in his letters as he writes to his loved ones in his first few months there. Like many people going far away for the first time in their life he experienced some homesickness, and it was evident that he missed home a great deal. However as time went on he gradually became more used to being away from home, as he forged connections with others in Seoul and made a life for himself in Korea.

https://www.princeton.edu/oip/practical-matters/Cultural-Adjustment.pdf

-Link about cultural adjustment

His tenacity to learn and embrace new opportunities, like traveling half way around the world to work in a place he'd never been before, is inspiring. When he got to Korea he also didn't waste a lot of time before diving into learning the language since he recognized the importance of immersing yourself as much as possible while abroad. He has inspired me to try and get more out of my time abroad as I have also undertaken the study of Korean here, although I doubt I'll learn as much as he did in the same time span.

https://archive.org/details/AComparativeGrammarOfTheKoreanLang

-Link to one of Hulbert’s works pertaining to the Korean language

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/culturesports/2016/08/19/0701000000AEN20160819001900315.html

-Link to article about Hulbert’s work promoting Hangul.

[brisctea-blog]

Off to the Presses

As I start my third week in Seoul, I have started to become more immersed in my work transcribing letters.  I now understand Hulbert’s handwriting and writing style much better which is helping me speed up my transcription speed allowing me to get done several letters a day more than in the previous weeks.  The letters we have access to started in 1883, which allows for a wealth of information regarding his activities before he departed for Korea.  He did not begin his journey for Korea until the summer of 1886, and I did not get to those letters until part way through this week.  The letters that he wrote to family while he was in the States tended to be quite terse as he saw them frequently and in some cases didn’t write to them at all since he saw them often enough.  His style of letter writing changed drastically starting with his journey west to San Francisco, the port he would leave for Korea from, as the letters became much longer and detailed and the content became more varied as he had more to talk about since he could only send letters to the U.S. once a month.  In addition to his friends and family, he also took up writing to newspapers to see if they would pay him for articles about Korea.

While transcribing, I came across a list of newspapers that Hulbert wrote too about his time in Korea and abroad.  This spurred me to look up the letters and articles he wrote for the many different newspapers.  That’s when I found out that he wrote what seemed like every paper under the sun, as what seems like ever major paper from his time has articles either by him, about him, or that mention him.  The one he wrote to most frequently during his first stint in Korea was “The Tribune” a New York City based paper that would later on become the International New York Times.  I was able to find a plethora of articles authored by him, so I gathered them up and shared them with my boss, Dong Jin Kim, so that they could be saved for the society to use later on.

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/

-Link to a history of the New York Tribune

Outside of work that week, there were also a few events we went to outside of office.  On Friday night we had dinner with some of the people that help advise the society and help spread the word about Hulbert’s accomplishments for Korea.  It was a fun occasion, and I was able to meet many people from many different occupations that all share an interest in Homer Hulbert.  The dinner lasted a few hours and at the end, Dong-Jin Kim had the people who work for the society introduce themselves.  Since he was speaking Korean the whole time I didn’t realize that I also had to introduce myself, so I was caught a little off guard when DJ called out to me.  I managed to say a little bit about myself and what I am doing for the society this summer, which DJ translated for me, since my Korean is very limited.  After that dinner ended and we all parted ways.

-A photo of the Hulbert Fellowship, the group of advisors I mentioned earlier.

The next day a few people from the society got together and went to a party that was being hosted by someone who has worked with the Hulbert Memorial Society in the past.  He works for the US Embassy in Seoul, which afforded us the opportunity to go visit Yongsan Garrison where the US Embassy employees live.  The party was small which gave us a chance to talk to him and his family, along with a handful of other guests.  He told me a lot about what it takes to get a job with the State Department, and gave me some tips on things to do to make myself stand out.  I also met some Americans who were visiting him for a little while, which was nice since I have not talked to many Americans since getting to Korea.  We were not at the party long, but it was a great opportunity to meet some new people and learn about what it is like to work for the state department.  It was not something I would have ever imagined I would do while a college student, but I have a feeling that more events like this will occur during my time at the Hulbert Memorial Society.

https://careers.state.gov/

-Link to the State Department’s website about careers

-Entrance to Yongsan Garrison

[homerhulbert]

The Prolific Letter Writer

My second week of work started with transcribing letters that Homer Hulbert sent to family members.  Back before phones and other quicker forms of communication were readily accessible to the public, most people had to write letters to each other to stay in touch.  If learn one thing from this internship it will definitely be to not take our instant communication for granted, as letters can sometimes take months to reach the intended recipient.  Hulbert’s letters did not take that long to reach people at first as the letters I began working with predated his time in Korea, but when I get to the later letters they may take months to reach who he is writing to which could drastically change how they are written.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/21/how-to-write-letters-1876/

-This site gives an idea of what letters where like in the 1800s

If reading an autobiography gives you a peek at how someone lived their life, then reading their correspondence from over the course of their lifetime will surely allow for an in depth study of who they were almost as if you are reliving their life with them.  The letters that we have on hand at the Hulbert Memorial Society to transcribe are from Hulbert’s college days in the early 1880s to the end of his life in the 1940s, giving us a comprehension look into his life as an adult.  His autobiographies were mostly from his own recollection of the past, but the letters allow us to see how he actually lived not sparing any details and being closer to the truth than the autobiographies ever could.  Working with the letters that Hulbert wrote to others will surely provide a chance to relive his life during this pivotal time in both the United States and Korea’s history.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/36.asp

-This is the Era of US History closely tied to American influence expanding overseas, and dominated the beginning part of Hulbert’s life.

http://koreanhistory.info/ChosonDynasty.htm

-This was the period in Korean history that Hulbert lived in Korea

In addition to transcribing letters all week long, the Hulbert Memorial Society was also invited to join a short trip with the Chairman of the Korea Independence Patriots Descendants Association and several descendants of Korean Independence Patriots.  It was only a day trip but it afforded me the opportunity to travel outside of Seoul for the first time since I got to Korea two weeks ago.  We went to Gangwon Province, which is a province on the east coast of South Korea and traveled to a few different locations making visits to people’s houses and socializing.

-Map of Korea for reference

I was the only foreigner with the group of Koreans, and I was by far the youngest being at least thirty years younger than the next youngest person was.  But this wasn’t a bad thing as I was able to learn a lot about how life was for Koreans growing up after the Korean War ended and gave me a chance to socialize outside of the usual demographic that I would at home.  Most of our time was spent in the countryside giving me a break from the city and a chance to appreciate the natural beauty of Korea.  We stopped in Sokcho, a city on the East Sea, at the end of the day to get dinner, allowing me to see what other Korean cities are like outside of the sprawling metropolis of Seoul.  This was a nice reprieve from the bustling city, which I have spent the last two weeks in.  I hope that I will get more opportunities to explore South Korea in the coming weeks.

-Picture I took while we were at one of the stops.

[homerhulbert]

Homer Hulbert a Man of the (Korean) People

I started working as an intern at the Hulbert Memorial Society in Seoul, South Korea this past week.  The Hulbert Memorial Society is a Korean nonprofit that is dedicated to gathering resources about Homer Hulbert and disseminating information about his accomplishments to the world.  They have had a few interns in the past, but I am the first one from my university so I didn’t know what to expect other than what I had gleaned from my professor Hope May, and a few short emails to the man in charge Dong Jin Kim.  I also did not know much about Homer Hulbert himself because there are not many resources about him available online, but that all changed after the first week in Seoul.

http://www.hulbert.or.kr/english/sub01.asp

-Hulbert Memorial Society’s website

My first day at the Hulbert Memorial Society I was greeted by a man that helps at the society from time to time named Mr. Jung.  He did not speak much English, which made my first few minutes at the society a little confusing.  After Mr. Kim showed up, we were able to start discussing my internship and a little bit about the society itself.  Once introductions were over we had lunch and talked about Homer Hulbert and why the society works so hard to get resources about him and subsequently why they work hard to get the world to recognize his achievements.  Homer Hulbert was an American that lived in Seoul for a few decades, which begged the question why focus on him and not a Korean from the same period?

-Homer Hulbert

It turns out that Homer Hulbert was a very influential person during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Korea, and was tasked with several duties of extremely high importance.  Why was a foreigner in a country that had barely opened up to the outside world able to make such an impact on Korean history?  It all started with his first job in Korea as a teacher for the first school to be taught in the western style in Korea.  This is where he taught English among other subjects to a small number of Korean nobles, he even got to meet he king because of this first job.  He spent several years as a teacher in Seoul, and even brought his family over to Korea with him, making the move to Korea semi-permanent as he and his family moved back and forth between the USA and Korea a few times.

After teaching for a few years, Hulbert worked on the Independent, the first Korean newspaper in Hangul, as its English version editor.  He gradually became closer to the King Gojong, as well as the Korean people earning their trust to the point where he served in a special guard to the King after the queen was assassinated in 1895.  Hulbert went on to start the “Korea Review”, which was an English language journal, in 1901 and had subscribers in nineteen countries.  In 1907, he went to The Hague Peace Conference on behalf of Korea to argue against Japan’s moves to take over Korea, and in that, same year went to President Roosevelt on behalf of King Gojong to plead for help with Japan.

http://opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e305

-For more background on The Hague Peace Conferences of 1889 and 1907

-King Gojong of Korea

He was subsequently exiled from Korea when the Japanese officially took over as he was a threat to them, but he never stopped opposing Japan writing for many publications and speaking all over the world about Japan’s atrocities.  He was a true Korean Independence Patriot, one of the few foreign ones.  His contributions number much greater than what I listed above as he worked as a teacher and publisher for several decades, working to make Korea better as well as spreading the word about the wonderful country to the entire world.

http://homerhulbert.com/Writings/index.html

-Several of his books, articles, and lectures are listed or available to read here.

I learned a great deal about Homer Hulbert during my first week in the office.  This was done mostly by reading two different autobiographies he wrote during his lifetime, one he wrote for family while the other he published.  They were not very long reads but it gave me a lot of insight into his life and how he came to be the man he was.  Aside from the autobiographies I also learned a little from my boss, Dong Jim Kim, when we got lunch together a few times that week.  Learning so much about Hulbert’s life has me really excited to begin my work at the Hulbert Memorial Society.