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Sat, July 2, 2022 | 07:24

Missionary misadventures with bandits, mountains, villagers

Richard Sidebotham, an American missionary living in Korea in the early 1900s, is often associated (rather inaccurately) with bringing the first piano into Korea, but I always associate him with what he lost - his clothes.

2022-03-27 17:56

Daegu and the legend of Korea's first piano

At the end of March 1900, the streets and markets of Daegu were awash with anticipation and wonder. People gossiped excitedly about the arrival of “the ghost-barrel” - a wondrous box that emitted strange sounds. “The ghost-barrel” - better known to Americans as a piano - had been presented to missionaries Richard and Effie Sidebotham as a going-away gift by their friends and ...

2022-03-18 19:01

Korea's precious trees in 1890s

For many residents of Seoul, hiking is a great way to get away from the confines of their apartments, workplaces and schools and get out into nature. It is a great outdoor activity during the pandemic as it maintains social distancing (although some of those mountain paths can be quite crowded). Seoul is blessed with an abundance of tree-covered mountains and hills but it has...

2022-03-13 14:36

Murder on the Yalu River

In the late 19th century, the region around the Yalu River was the Wild West of the Korean Peninsula. At night, it was not uncommon for tigers to prey upon the unwary traveler or snatch farm animals and children from isolated villages. Its great natural resources, especially timber and gold, attracted a danger even greater than tigers - it attracted men willing to murder in o...

2022-03-12 09:28

The short-lived Russo-Korean Bank of 1898

In early December 1897, rumors began to circulate that Russia was going to attempt to take control of Korea economically - it was going to establish a bank in Seoul. On Dec. 8, J. Hunt, the commissioner of Korean Customs at Fusan, sent a missive to John Jordan, the British consul-general in Seoul, in which he reported that a Russian from Vladivostok named V.M. Koreylin would ...

2022-03-06 09:06

Yun Hui-sun, a female freedom fighter

There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words but is the story that it is telling the truth? When viewing an image we need context. Who were the people who appear in the picture, when and why was it taken and who was the photographer - with this information we are better able to understand what the image is trying to tell us.

2022-03-05 09:39

Korean kites: carrying away bad luck

While wandering the streets of Seoul in February 1884, Percival Lowell commented about the number of large ...

2022-02-27 12:30

Korean kites: aerial battles as cornerstone of childhood

Korean kites: aerial battles as cornerstone of childhood

In early February 1903, the sky over every village and city in Korea was filled with kites. In Pyongyang, nine-year-old Il-han described the kites as resembling “a vast flock of gulls” dashing and whirling about, but they were not flying about aimlessly, for they all had “a real purpose” - they were the weapons in the annual kite fights. These kite fights - as well as the kit...

2022-02-26 09:10

Korean kites: carrying away bad luck

Heungseon Daewongun, the tiger with 'bowels of iron and a heart of stone'

Tuesday, Feb. 22, 1898, was a cold, windy and gloomy day but for Alexis de Speyer, the Russian representative to Korea, it was a great day. According to him, “two very pleasant things occurred on the same night”: the attempted assassination of Kim Hong-nuik, his interpreter, and “the death of the Emperor's father” Heungseon Daewongun - a man he considered to be Russia's enemy.

2022-02-20 09:00

Assassins in Seoul's streets in 1898: Kim Hong-nuik

Arguably, one of the most hated men in Seoul in 1898 was Kim Hong-nuik, the interpreter at the Russian legation. Horace N. Allen, the American minister to Korea, described Kim as “a very common and uneducated man, unable to read or write the official Chinese characters used in Korea” - but he had a skill that was needed: having been born near the Russian border, Kim was able ...

2022-02-19 09:29

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