I spent two months of this summer in Seoul. Thanks to Korea Institute’s generous research grants in previous years, as well as the current one, I went to Seoul with high familiarity. My visits in the summers of 2008 and 2011 prepared me well for this research trip. I navigated through the ins and outs of Seoul like a local. I had a very comfortable stay in Seoul and returned to Cambridge deeply missing its connectivity and efficiency.
This time in Seoul, the efficiency of this metropolis left me awestruck. As do most incoming foreign visitors to South Korea, I landed at Incheon International Airport. My experience with the AREX train at a previous trip left me underwhelmed, so I opted to take the Limousine Bus instead. What amazed me was that from the moment of my plane’s arrival at the gate to purchasing my bus ticket, no more than 30 minutes had passed. In less than 30 minutes, I moved across a large airport terminal, cleared customs, and picked up my check-in luggage. I hopped on the Limousine Bus and made my way to Bongcheon-dong, a neighborhood just down the hill where Seoul National University is located. That bus trip was very time-consuming, because of Seoul’s chronic traffic problems. In just short of 90 minutes, I arrived at the SNU Entrance metro station and looked for the real estate office that I had contacted a few days prior. The agent was expecting me with a list of four to five apartments, and I immediately went house-hunting. I settled for a small, but cozy, new, and very comfortable apartment that was located three minutes from Bongcheon metro station on foot. Then, expecting to stay at a hostel somewhere for about a week, I asked my agent when I could move in. Apparently I could move in immediately, so I signed a short-term lease agreement and moved in that evening. I arrived in Incheon Airport at 3:30pm; I was in my new apartment looking up dinner options in the neighborhood by 8pm.
Unlike previous years, I did not utilize the Kyujanggak archives as much. Instead, I found a new sanctuary in the National Library in Seocho district and worked on my dissertation chapters while exploring the highly developed coffee shop culture in Hongdae district. My apartment’s convenient location placed me within 20 minutes of the National Library (10 minutes on the subway and 10 minutes on foot) and 30 minutes to Hongdae on the green line. The commuting time was not wasted either, because the entire Seoul Metro system provides 3G connection as well as WiFi hotspots to the Internet. I set up my iPad so that I could read primary sources online or make minor edits to my writing during travel. I visited the National Library to find sources. I spent most of my time at the Digital Library in the basement, which provided me access to any of the hundreds of computer stations and digitized archival materials.
As usual, I reconnected with my contacts in Korea and established ties with new scholars. Among them, I had the fortune of engaging in a lengthy discussion with Professor Yi Ikchu of University of Seoul over dinner. The positive feedback and constructive pointers I received from a specialist of my research time period was enormously helpful for me. It provided me with a renewed sense of reassurance that my dissertation research is heading in the right direction. In late June, I attended the annual Harvard-SNU-UCLA graduate student conference, hosted this time at SNU’s Kyujanggak Institute. There I was introduced to a host of undergraduate and junior graduate students with loads of enthusiasm and amazing breadth of knowledge about Korea. We keep in touch regularly still.
This summer I made the extra effort to visit as many historical sites as my schedule allowed. (I also participated in a KI-sponsored field trip in Honam region, but that report will be filed separately.) I visited a number of memorial halls, reconstructions of pavilions belonging to famous Chosŏn-period scholars, palace compounds, among others. Of those trips, the day tour I arranged with Professor Yi Ikchu, along with a couple of other graduate students, in the traditional districts of Seoul was particularly memorable. We met in the morning at the Chosŏn dynasty’s National Academy in Sungkyunkwan University, hiked up to the northern segments of the city wall, then down to the royal palaces and ancestral temples. Professor Yi’s expert commentaries not only enriched our tour, as we had predicted, but also allowed us to experience many aspects that would not have been accessible to us even with the aid of guide materials.
I am truly grateful to the Korea Institute for providing me with this fantastic opportunity to carry out my summer research in Seoul, reconnect with my very important network of scholars there, and work on my dissertation chapters with immediate access to sources not available at Harvard-Yenching Library. My summer stay in Korea will prove to be invaluable in positively shaping the future direction of my dissertation.