Downloads, lectures, and excursions available from RASKB

Over at the revamped Royal Asiatic Society - Korea Branch website, there is now a blog which will attempt to keep people posted on current events. It's a work in progress, but the idea will be to post videos of lectures so that those who can't attend can watch them afterwards. One such lecture is this fascinating one from 2006 by Professor In-ho Lee, Korea's first female ambassador who was posted to both Finland and Russia. The lecture looks at Korean history from the late nineteenth century to the present, and discusses the attempts by leftist historians to re-write Korean history from their point of view, one in which the U.S. is to blame for Korea's post-liberation trials. At any rate, it's excellent, and well worth your time if you have any interest in that topic.

As well, the RASKB now has every issue of Transactions - back to 1900! - digitized and available to be downloaded; see this page for the list of volumes or articles. The menu at left will also allow you to search through subject, title, or author indexes.

Also, the deadline to sign up for two upcoming excursions - one to Pocheon to see makgeolli breweries (and make makgeolli yourself) and one to see colonial-era architecture in Gunsan - is today; see here for more details.

Last, but not least, tomorrow's lecture will be worth attending if you have any interest in turn of the (last) century Korea. Titled 'Yankee Knight Errant at the Court of the Emperor Manque: William Franklin Sands and King Gojong in the "Korean Cockpit,"' it will look at William Franklin Sands, who served in the U.S. embassy and then became the last independent American adviser to the Joseon Dynasty. His observations of the penultimate chapter of the Joseon Dynasty form the basis of his fascinating book 'Undiplomatic Memories,' and the lecture will be based on previously unseen documentary materials in Sands' archived papers. See here for more information.