What I've Been Missing This Summer

Here's a selection of photo stories from the JoongAng Daily from the past two months. This posting is  a reminder to myself of what I've missed while I was unable to blog this summer.

Ajumma's version of Nanta

1.Women from Wanju, North Jeolla, present a performance based on the old practice of ironing out wrinkled clothes by pounding with wooden clubs. The performance was held at the 2011 Seongbuk District’s Day of Social Enterprises at the Seongbuk District. [JoongAng Ilbo]

Magical Mystery Tour by Moonlight

2. Greeters welcome visitors to the Moonlight Tour at Changdeok Palace, hosted by the Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation. The event included an evening tour of the palace and performances of traditional Korean music and dance. The tour will resume in September. [NEWSIS]

Were the gods listening when Gangnam was flooded?

3.The National Folk Museum holds a traditional ritual to pray for clear skies, peace and the well-being of the nation. During the folk ceremony, called Gicheongje, museum-goers participated in prayers to the ancient mountain and river gods in the east, west, south and north to stop the deluge by offering drinks and food. By Kim Sang-seon

Would budget travellers be turned away from these cafeterias?

4. Dozens of Seoul citizens eat lunch yesterday at a police station cafeteria. With high inflation, many have resorted to eating in places like police stations and district offices, which offer inexpensive meals. [YONHAP]

Welcome Home, Uigwe, Even Though The French Say It's Just a Loan

5. Hyojang Seja Chaekrye Dogam Uigwe, above, an illustrated guide to the inauguration of the crown prince, will be displayed at the National Museum of Korea from July 19 to Sept. 18 in a special exhibition commemorating the return of the documents from France. It is one of 297 volumes of the Oegyujanggak Uigwe, which were returned to Korea from France in four difference batches from April to May this year. [YONHAP]

Hurray for the Dulle - How long will it take to walk around Bukhansan?

6. Climbers check a section of the Dulle walkway course that circles the entire circumference of Mount Bukhan, which was opened to the public yesterday after nine months of construction. [YONHAP]

How many different ways can you cook tuna?

7. Chefs yesterday lift a giant bluefin tuna to divide into pieces at a tuna restaurant in Jonggak, central Seoul. The tuna, which weighed 350 kilograms (772 pounds) and measured 270 centimeters (8 feet 10 inches) long, was caught off the shores of Jeju Island. [YONHAP]


 

Did Mr Gere do the 300 bows?

 8. U.S. actor Richard Gere signs a guestbook at Jogye Temple in central Seoul  as monk Sung Jin  watches. Gere, was in Korea for six days to promote his photo exhibition “Pilgrim,” which features photographs of Tibet, and to experience Korean Buddhism. “Pilgrim" runs until July 24. Gere will also visit Tongdo Temple in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang, and Donghwa Temple in Daegu. [AP/YONHAP]

Remind me to look out for a paddy field next time I visit Changdeokgung.

9. Tourists join officials of the Rural Development Administration and the Cultural Heritage Administration to plant rice in a paddy at Changdeok Palace in Seoul. Joseon Dynasty kings used to show their support of agriculture by planting rice themselves. By Kim Sang-seon

Sorry, smokers but my lungs and nostrils are celebrating this bit of news.

10. Seoul Metropolitan Government officials patrol Cheonggye Plaza in central Seoul as a new ordinance designating the plaza as a nonsmoking zone took effect. Smokers caught breaking the rule will be fined 100,000 won ($93.06). By Kim Do-hoon

Sources:

1. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2938374

2. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2937755

3. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2939776

4. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2939775

5. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2938962

6. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2938308

7. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2938186

8. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2937857

9. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2936985

10. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2937041

Pillaged National Treasure - A Lost Cause?

The French did it. The Germans did it. The Brits did it. In fact, anyone who was in the position to do so, probably has done so in the past. For that matter, museum curators probably would still do it if they could get away with it.

What am I talking about? Robbing a nation of its national treasures. Since I was on the subject of Hwaseong and uigwe a few postings back, I wanted to follow up with the knotty problem of recovering national treasures from the looters. There are many Korean treasures sitting in the vaults of museums or private collectors in Japan, the USA and Europe as a result of invasions, looting, smuggling and illegal purchases.

These figures were quoted in the JoongAng Daily: "According to the Cultural Heritage Administration in Korea, 107,857 pieces of Korean cultural properties were scattered throughout 18 countries as of the end of last year. Of these, more than 61,000 - by far the most - were in Japan, followed by about 27,000 in the United States and almost 4,000 in China. Only about 7,500 of the looted pieces have been returned to date."

An example of the beautiful banchado, illustrations in uigwe

  

Frustrated with the government's foot-dragging or tip-toeing around the issue, some civic groups from Korea have taken their own initiative to recover some of these artefacts. For instance, a group calling themselves Cultural Action have submitted their own  appeal to the French government to return 296 uigwe from the Joseon Dynasty. About 30 of them were specially produced for the royal family and so they are even more valuable as unique texts with no other copies of them.

The library in Ganghwado which the Joseon kings thought could provide adequate protection for the royal uigwe. How wrong they were.

The uigwe intended for the eyes of the Joseon kings were made of superior-quality materials and had illustrations not found in ordinary uigwe. Unfortunately they were stolen from Oegyujanggak, the library built by King Jeongjo when the French military overran Ganghwa-do in 1866.

 

The French soldiers had burnt most of the library and its contents but were impressed enough by the beauty of these Joseon protocol records meant for the kings to carry them back to France. Then less than 30 years ago, Park Byeong-seo, a Korean working at the French museum stumbled upon them among Chinese artefacts and since then, the Koreans have been crusading to recover these documents.

Join the queue, my friends.

The Greeks have been trying for ages to recover the Elgin Marbles ( did you know that "elginism" is the term given to the act of cultural vandalism?) ; the treasures of various Chinese dynasties are as widely scattered as Chinatowns over the face of the earth and the Egyptians have their own wish list of things they'd like to get back from various museums around the world.

I'm not suggesting that members of the Cultural Action give up their quest but I would humbly submit that their energy could be more constructively spent getting electronic copies of the uigwe in France, translating them into various languages for people around the world to appreciate and learn from the insights gathered from the minds of those who lived in the past. I know there are already digital copies put up on the Internet but I wonder when those who can't read the traditional Chinese script can benefit from this project.

 Kim Mun-sik and Shin Byung-joo's book, published in 2005 by Dolbegae, analyzes uigwe.

sources:

http://www.france24.com/en/20100407-cairo-archaeology-meeting-recover-national-treasures-nefertiti-rosetta-stone

http://www.elginism.com/definition/

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2917210

http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=762951
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2010/01/148_15229.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uigwe
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/archives_of_asian_art/v058/58.yi.html
http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/CU/CU_EN_8_4_5_5.jsp
http://www.museum-security.org/?p=3705
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2898272
http://www.koreabrand.net/en/now/now_view.do?CATE_CD=0028&SEQ=533
http://www.eapubc.net/books/?mode=recommendation&id=96&PHPSESSID=90fe67ad982a835f22c9e0dfdeef2110
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~caplabtb/dprk/Korea_Report0708.doc
http://www.worldhistoryblog.com/2004/06/hwasong-fortress-in-suwon.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Campaign_against_Korea,_1866
http://www.hwasong.henny-savenije.pe.kr/

Reconstructing Hwaseong With Uigwe

Learnt a new Korean word and got sidetracked. Meant to write more about Hwaseong but when I heard about Uigwe, started to read up on them and learnt a few more interesting things along the way. It was a paragraph written by Professor Han Young-woo which started the ball rolling:

“In 1997, when UNESCO added Suwon’s Hwaseong Fortress to its World Heritage list, it was not only Hwaseong’s architecture that impressed the evaluation committee members. The Hwaseong Fortress, built at the end of the 18th century to fulfil the dream of King Jeongjo (1776 – 1800), is of course a beautiful and valuable cultural asset; however, the 1500-page Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe, a detailed account of the construction process, amazed the evaluators even more. This is because Russia’s St.Petersburg and the US capital of Washington, D.C., also developed at the end of the 18th century, do not have such detailed construction records.”

Uigwe is the term given to written and illustrated records of royal protocols first produced when the Joseon Dynasty was founded in 1392. The work of compiling the records was maintained up to the end of the dynasty in 1910. Professor Han concludes: “….those who have seen uigwe can only seriously reflect upon how greatly we fail to appreciate the Joseon Dynasty’s level of governance and culture of recordkeeping, and just how superficial today’s recordkeeping culture really is. We need to acknowledge that the secret to the Joseon Dynasty’s lengthy existence of 518 years was  undoubtedly related to its incomparable recordkeeping.”

Each time the royal house of Joseon had a marriage banquet, funeral, national ceremony or rites for the military or the envoys, a Dogam (都監), an ad hoc committee would be formed to direct the event. After the major ceremony was over, the Dogam became a Uigwecheong to put together all the relevant information regarding the event so that future Dogams could refer to the manual as a model to ensure continuity of important rites. “These records were written exclusively in Chinese characters, but combined both literary Chinese and the unique Korean writing system called idu, in which Chinese characters were borrowed to record the sound or meaning of Korean words.”

To appreciate the value of the uigwe, consider the example of Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe, the Archives of the Construction of Hwasong Fortress which is now stored in Kyujangha ( the Cultural Library of Seoul National University). It provides details about the process of construction of Hwaseong such as:

• the elevation plans of the fortress
•  explanations of the dimensions of the building
• illustrations of different machines used in the construction
•  materials and costs to build the machines as well as the fortress itself
•  the locations of the tiles and bricks produced and their costs
• a record of the building materials which were left over
•  daily records of wages paid to the construction workers AND
• a list of ALL the artisans involved, from stonemasons to plasterers to roofers including their names, addresses and days they each worked.

No wonder then that these records played a vital part when a reconstruction project of Hwaseong Fortress was undertaken in the last century.

Sources:

http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=762951
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2010/01/148_15229.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uigwe
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/archives_of_asian_art/v058/58.yi.html
http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/CU/CU_EN_8_4_5_5.jsp
http://www.museum-security.org/?p=3705
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2898272 map of K treasures held by other countries
http://www.koreabrand.net/en/now/now_view.do?CATE_CD=0028&SEQ=533
http://www.eapubc.net/books/?mode=recommendation&id=96&PHPSESSID=90fe67ad982a835f22c9e0dfdeef2110
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~caplabtb/dprk/Korea_Report0708.doc
http://www.worldhistoryblog.com/2004/06/hwasong-fortress-in-suwon.html
http://www.hwasong.henny-savenije.pe.kr/