This week, we focused on the fall of the Choson dynasty and the lead up to Japanese colonization. We focused on an excerpt from the dutch explorer Hamel’s journal. Hamel was on an expedition to Taiwan when a storm took him to Korea, making him the first European to visit and take records of the Korean peninsula. He was captured and treated relatively poorly. I thought it was a very interesting look into the Korean world from an outsider’s perspective. It was the first time in the class that we had seen what Korea looked like to an outsider from another part of the world. The treatment of the outsider was extremely interesting as well because I had developed the idea that Koreans really tried to adopt Confucian and Buddhist ideals into their society so I found it ironic that Hamel and his crew were treated so maliciously in a society that attempts to adopt such peaceful ideals. Another thing that I found interesting in the reading that I went into more detail in my discussion was how Hamel compared the Koreans to the Chinese and Japanese using their cultures as a frame of reference to understand the Korean culture.
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