[History] Different Stories of two Countries

When I went to Jeollanam-do in December 2018, I wanted to visit Gangjin which is located at the southern part of the province facing a long triangular bay called "Gangjin Bay".

Journalist Park Jong-in, specialized in history and travel, describes the Gangjin county as a "land of treasure." He once raised a question, "What if the Joseon dynasty took advantage of three kinds of treasure found at Gangjin?" They are Dutch sea man Henrick Hamel, Dasan Jeong Yakyong (다산 정약용/茶山 丁若鏞) and Goryeo celadon (고려청자/高麗靑瓷).

* 지구온난화로 제주도와 남해안이 아열대 기후(겨울 평균기온이 영하3℃~18℃, 월평균 10℃가 넘는 달이 8개월 이상)에 편입됨에 따라 강진은 바나나, 애플망고, 레드향 등 아열대 작물 재배단지로도 각광을 받고 있다.

 

The answer is not difficult to solve. The history of Korea would have been fundamentally changed in a similar way as the modernization of Japan.

 

 

At that time, unfortunately, no one in the Joseon Court did not recognize and understand the real value of the treasure. They were treated as common stones in the field and cast away to this remote part of the nation.

First, the Joseon establishment preferred white and simple celadon to the jade-color Goryeo celadon of complex shapes. Therefore, famous Goryeo celadon klin sites, which were briskly operated in the 12th and 13th centuries, were forgotten and buried underground for hundreds of years until the wreckages of old cargo ships loaded with thousands of Goryeo porcelains were found at a nearby seabed in the 2000s.

 

* 청자상감운학문매병(왼쪽 국보 68호)과 백자청화철채동채초충난국문병(국보 294호)

 

Second, a great scholar Jeong Yakyong stayed on exile at Gangjin for the period from 1801-1818. Unfortunately, the intellectual resources called Silhak (실학/實學) represented by a huge amount of products authored by Jeong Yakyong had no chance to be utilized in the administrative practices in the Joseon period. It was in the 1920s under the Japanese occupation that Jeong Yakyong's works were published and read broadly.

 

Third, the expertise and skills of the drifted Dutch seamen including Hendrick Hamel were never used by the Joseon dynasty. After three Dutch men made trouble with a Chinese diplomat by asking him for their repatriation to homeland, other seamen were relocated to the remote places like Gangjin and Suncheon.

 

I went to Byeongyeong (병영/兵營, literally meaning military barracks) where a memorial hall dedicated to Hendrick Hamel is located. It is said that Hamel and other Dutch detainees stayed near the regional garrison being forced to eradicate weeds in front of military barracks of Joseon Army garrison stationed to Gangjin, Jeolla-do.

 

* 병영 하멜 기념관의 동상은 그의 고향 네덜란드 호르큼 시에 있는 동상과 똑같이 만들었다.

 

I imagined Hamel and his crew had hard times in Jeollanam-do (1657-1666) and they dared to escape this country out of starvation and despairing future of no probability of going home.

At that time, the Korean government had no idea of "open door policy" and could not guess to make the most of Westerners with high-tech knowledge and experience.

 

* 강진 체류 당시 하멜 일행은 이 길을 걸어다녔을 뿐만 아니라 병영 주변 풀뽑기 사역에도 동원되었다.

* 전라병영 성안의 느티나무는 당시 벽안의 남만인들을 지켜 보았을 것이다.

 

On the contrary, Japanese rulers allowed Dutch merchants to trade with Japan on a limited basis at Tejima and imported the advanced European goods and knowledge like medicine. It was because the Japanese leaders were practical-minded and not so much absorbed in Neo-Confucianism. 

 

Unlike Hendrick Hamel in Korea, Philipp von Siebold, a German physician and botanist working for the Dutch government in Japan, was permitted to teach the Western medicine and anatomy to Japanese young students, and had made great achievements in Japan called Rangaku (난학/蘭學, Dutch learning).

 

* 당시 네덜란드에서는 세계가 좁다하고 전인구의 절반 가까이 국제무역에 종사하였다고 한다.

* 네덜란드 동인도회사의 무역거래 장부(하멜기념관 소장 비치)

 

The consequence changed the destiny of two nations hundreds of years later when Japan attacked and occupied Korea as a colony in 1910.

I wish such a situation will never take place here in Korea despite ominous signs of some Galapagos syndromes.

See further information of Hendrick Hamel and Philipp von Siebold at Park's IBT Forum  and the KoreanLII site.