The following article was written by Terry Bennett and appeared under the title ‘Korea’ in John Hannavy’s Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, New York: Routledge, 2008.

 

Korea

The history of nineteenth-century Korean photography is dominated by foreign photographers and studios. Recognizable, traceable Korean studios did not appear until well into the twentieth century. In order to understand why, we need to consider briefly the political, social and economic background to which the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ was exposed for much of that time.

By the mid-nineteenth century the Yi Dynasty had ruled Korea since 1392 and experienced a number of invasions from China and Japan. A policy of ‘no contact’ with foreigners was adopted. Ships were turned away - forcibly if necessary. Korean society was regimented and an individual’s status was immutably fixed at birth. Confucianism was the dominant philosophy and a consequent culture of respect for elders and superiors was observed and enforced. Government and tax collection was centralized and corruption of officials was endemic. Peasants had no incentive to produce more than subsistence levels as any excess would be taxed heavily. The aristocracy was forbidden to engage in commerce, and innovation and free-thinking were frowned upon. The economy was weak, and interest in the outside world was negligible.

A few foreign missionaries managed to disguise themselves and penetrate into some regions and, as a result, some information concerning internal events did seep through to the outside world. By the early 1860s, however, it was becoming less likely that the Western powers would continue to tolerate the ‘anomaly’ of Korea’s closed shores. China and Japan had been opened, why not Korea?  Countries such as Britain, France and Russia were of course interested in extending their trading options, but they also wanted to secure ‘safe harbors’ for their ships should weather conditions or food and water provisions dictate. Another consideration was the strategic importance of the Korean Peninsular. None of the Powers wished to see any of their rivals dominate the area by seizing and occupying one or more ports.

A Russian fleet visited the port of Wonsan in 1856 and tried in vain to open a dialogue with the local officials. In 1866 the still deeply conservative regime became concerned over the increasing number of Christian converts and instituted a wholesale massacre. A number of French priests were also killed, although a few of them escaped and reported the events to the French admiral in China. As a result, seven French warships sailed to Kanghwa Island, close to Seoul. When negotiations broke down, the French looted Kanghwa city but were driven off after suffering significant casualties. The same year an American ship, the USS General Sherman, tried to open commercial relations. Misunderstandings arose, and when the ship became grounded in the shallow Taedong River, all on board were massacred and the ship was burnt.

Taking stock: Did any of these events give rise to photographic opportunities? It was now 1866, and a photographic image of Korea or its people had yet to be published. That was very late indeed for photography – even for the Far East.

In fact the writer has seen one carte de visite portrait, from a Shanghai Chinese studio, of what appears to be a French priest together with other Koreans – presumably escapees from the 1866 persecution. And Korean sources have said that during a tribute mission to China in 1863, two Korean envoys were photographed. However, these photographs have not materialized. The writer also has in his collection several cartes de visite of French origin, which show portraits of unkempt-looking Koreans probably photographed on board a ship. The 1866 French-Korean conflict strongly suggests itself.

We now come to the earliest-dated photographs of Korea and Koreans taken, appropriately enough, by two of the greatest nineteenth-century photographers to have worked in the Far East – Felix Beato and John Thomson.

In May, 1871 Admiral Rodgers led a fleet of five ships to Kanghwa with the dual purpose of enquiring about the attack on the General Sherman and of opening trade relations. Felix Beato had managed to get himself taken on as the expedition’s photographer. He embarked with the fleet at Nagasaki, taking with him his assistant, H. Woollett and two Japanese servants. When the American diplomacy failed, Beato was able to photograph the conflict of the 10th and 11th of June – including the carnage inside the captured forts. The Koreans lost 350 soldiers, the Americans three. Admiral Rodgers sailed away empty-handed a few weeks later; both sides felt victorious. Beato had gone across to Shanghai by 28th June. On the 30th June, with the American fleet still in Korea, Beato advertised in the Shanghai News Letter the sale of his photograph albums of the conflict! Beato was a businessman and did not believe in wasting time. Albums of the conflict are exceptionally rare, but one example is held by the Library of Congress, another is in the writer’s collection. Altogether, approximately forty photographs of the hostilities were secured.

In September of the same year, John Thomson was on a photographic tour of China and had reached Peking. There he encountered a few Koreans who were part of a mission to China and were on the point of leaving. Thomson was just in time to secure one portrait of two of the officials which is reproduced in his monumental 1873-74 work,  Illustrations of China and its Peoples.

The next dateable image of Koreans occurred in 1874. That year, several American scientific expeditions headed for the Far East to record the Transit of Venus. The team that would be based at Vladivostok had a D.R. Clark as senior photographer. The outward journey took the team from San Francisco to Yokohama, thence to Nagasaki before reaching Vladivostok. When the expedition was over, Clark separated from the team at Nagasaki and made his own way home through Europe. Clark copyrighted and published a stereoview series in 1875, from an address in Indianapolis, Indiana, which he called Asiatic and Tropical Views. Included in this series were views of Japan, China, Vladivostok, Ceylon and Singapore. The list appears on the back of each view.  Intriguingly, however, there are also five views of Korean interest listed: Natives of Corea, Corean Dwelling, Corean School House and Coreans in the Market (2 views).

At first sight it looked as though Clark had achieved a real photographic scoop in securing views in Korea. Recently, however, the writer had the opportunity of seeing two of these rare views and it seems certain that they are of a Korean emigrant community living in Vladivostok. The first view, Natives of Corea, which is now in the writer’s collection, is particularly interesting. It shows a group of some fifty Korean men, women and children standing or sitting for the photograph. This would appear to be the earliest-known photograph to include Korean women.

In 1876 the country was forcibly opened, but only to the Japanese. The Treaty of Kanghwa was signed and trade relations between the two countries began. Photographs of the Korean embassy which travelled to Japan that year are contained in the writer’s collection. The photographer is unknown. This is also the case with a fine group of photographs of an 1880 mission to Japan, which are held by the Russian Geographical Society, St. Petersburg. The first treaty with a Western power was effected with the United States in 1882, and the ratification ceremony took place in Washington the following year; a photograph of the Korean envoys, by an unidentified photographer, is in the Peabody Essex Museum. Treaties with other major powers quickly followed, and Korean politics became even more confused as internal power struggles coincided with attempts by Japan, China and Russia to exert greater influence over the Korean court.

It is around this time that Korean scholars suggest that some photographic activity amongst Koreans themselves started to emerge. It is believed that the first professional Korean photographer was Kim Yong-Won who was a member of both the 1876 and 1880 embassies to Japan. He developed an interest in photography and sought the help of a Japanese photographer known as Honda Shunosuke. It is said that Honda helped Kim to set up a studio in Korea in 1883. The following year, Ji Un-Young, who had studied photography in Japan, also opened a studio. Hwang Chul, who set up his business with equipment imported from Shanghai also opened a studio in 1884. It must be said, however, that no photographs appear to have survived, and research to date has unearthed precious little documentary evidence concerning the activities of these three pioneers.

In any case, all three had to contend with widespread ignorance and suspicion of photography. Koreans popularly believed, for example, that if a tree were photographed it would wither and die. Being photographed was also thought to be injurious to one’s health. More seriously, rumors persisted that photographic chemicals were the residue from cooked children. Not surprisingly, feelings would occasionally run high and Hwang Chul’s studio suffered regular stoning.  The new technology was also associated with the unpopular Japanese, and the general hostility resulted in all three studios being closed down and destroyed in 1884. Kim, Ji and Hwang apparently travelled abroad in order to re-establish their businesses.

Not surprisingly, these early photographers had confined themselves to portraiture, which they could practise in relative safety. Ji Un-Young must have hoped that recognition was imminent when he secured a photographic sitting with King Kojong. Although this did not alter the fate of these early studios, it did seem to create some Court interest in photography. But it took another ten years before Kim Kyu-Jin, an artist who went to Japan to study photography around 1895, was appointed the first official photographer at the Korean Court. Yet again, however, no photographs of his have to date been positively identified, and there seems to be little, if any, information about his life. At some stage Hwang Chul is said to have taken photographs of Korean scenery and famous landmarks, but his efforts did not seem to have been appreciated by his contemporaries and he was subject to constant harassment and arrested as a spy and thrown into prison.

In the final few years of the nineteenth century, photography was given a real boost when the King issued an ordinance banning the wearing of the traditional male topknot. Many Koreans wished to preserve an image of what they looked like before complying and photo studios suddenly experienced unprecedented demand. This greater familiarity with the process engendered greater acceptance, and the idea of photography as a profession became firmly established. But Korean sources have yet to uncover any other native Korean studios until the 1920s. And it remains the case, as far as the writer is aware, that no nineteenth-century photograph, taken by a Korean, has so far been positively identified.

By the late-1880s, however, a succession of amateur Western photographers had photographed the country. Whether diplomats, missionaries or travellers, we are indebted to them all for adding to the relatively meager number of early Korean photographs. The American naval attaché and diplomat, George Clayton Foulk (1856-93), was a talented amateur and has left a number of photographs of Korea which are spread amongst several American institutions. In 1883, the American, Percival Lowell, was attached to a returning Korean Embassy and spent some time in Seoul. In a book which he published in 1885, he included some twenty-five of his own photographs. In April 1885, the British, without previous warning or permission, unceremoniously occupied a group of islands off the south coast of Korea known as Komundo – or, to the British, Port Hamilton. The rationale of the occupation was to forestall the Russians from doing the same and thereby procuring an ice-free port south of Vladivostok. The British stayed until 1887 and several photographs taken during the occupation have survived. Commander Edward Davis (1846-1929) of HMS Daring and Commander Harry Grenfell (1845-1916) of HMS Pegasus are known to have taken portraits of the local inhabitants between May and August of 1885.

The first professional Japanese photographers in Korea seem to have been Honda Shunosuke, who was mentioned earlier, and Kameya Teijiro who died in Korea in 1885 following the setting up of his studio at around this time. Nothing much about Kameya is known. His family name was Yoshii and he began to study under the female Nagasaki photographer, Kameya Toyo, who had adopted Teijiro as her son in around 1871. Both of them were to die in 1885.

A large part of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894/95 was fought on Korean soil. Photographs of the conflict were taken by a number of Western photographers. Examples were the French artist and cartoonist, Georges Bigot (1860-1927), many of whose photographs can be seen at Kawasaki City Museum, Japan and John Alfred Vaughan, an engineer on HMS Undaunted. Examples of his work are in the writer’s collection. The Japanese, Suzuki Keikun also photographed the conflict.

There were a number of other photographers, amateur and professional, who took their cameras into 1880s and 1890s Korea, too many to mention here. Because Korean photography was so late in getting started, virtually all surviving work is represented in albumen or silver print. Photographic formats include stereoviews, cabinet, cartes de visite, and lantern slides. All nineteenth-century photography of Korea is rare, and what there is exists mainly outside Korea. At the time of writing (January 2006), there was only one small, private photography museum in the country. Plans to build a national museum have yet to be formalised.

 

Selected  Bibliography

Bennett, Terry, Korea Caught In Time, Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1997.

Choi Injin, Park Juseok and Lee Kyungmin, History of Korean Photography, Seoul: The Research Institute The History of Photography, 1998. Exhibition Catalogue. Korean text.

Cho P’ang-Haeng,  Yi-Dynasty through Pictures, Volumes 1 and 2, Seoul: Somuntang, 1994. Korean text.

Chung Sung-Kil, Korea One Hundred Years Ago: Photographs (1871-1910), Seoul: Korea Information Cultural Center, Seoul, 1989. Korean text.

Kwon Jong-Wook , A Study on the activity of Japanese photographers in the early  history of Korean photography, in Bulletin of The Japan Society for Arts and History of Photography, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2005 (text in Japanese).

Oh Ki-Kwon (ed.), 100 Years of Korean History in photographs 1876-1976, Seoul: Dong-A Ilbo, 1978. Korean text.

Underwood, Peter A., Moffett, Samuel H., and Sibley, Norman R., First Encounters: Korea 1880-1910, Seoul: Dragon’s Eye Graphics, 1982.

Yi Hon, Independence Movement through Pictures, Volume 1, Seoul: Somuntang, 1987. Korean Text.