A Graduate Student Perspective: Graduate Summer Research in South Korea 2012: John Lee

From June 6, 2012 to August 12, 2012, I was in South Korea to continue research on my dissertation project, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People: The Social Implications of Forest Conservation in Early Modern Korea, 1600-1876,” an integrated analysis of Chosŏn-era woodland protection policies, their implementation, and consequences. My project is also the first English-language dissertation to analyze Korean history through an environmental perspective.  

In June, I made a presentation about my dissertation topic at Seoul National University as part of the SNU-UCLA-Harvard graduate student workshop. I received excellent feedback from a wide variety of professors and graduate students, and I was able to make valuable connections that greatly enriched my research progress. I was able to meet numerous professors, including Kim Kŏntae of Seoul National and Chŏn Yŏngu of Kookmin University, who were able to impart their respective expertise, introduce me to graduate students, and generally benefit my research and time in Korea through their generosity.

Also, from late June through mid-July, I went on three separate field trips through western and southern Korea. The first field trip, which was organized by Professor Sun Joo Kim, took a variety of professors and graduate students through Chŏlla province. There, we visited old archeological sites, spent a night at a Buddhist temple, and (most importantly for my research) visited a remarkable little village called Kurim. Since 1748, Kurim villagers have maintained a Pine Association (songgye) that cultivated and protected local pine forests. These Pine Associations, which spread throughout southern Korea during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are crucial to my dissertation’s argument that forest conservation became a critical issue for government officials as well as local villagers during the late Chosŏn period. The villagers generously allowed me to see numerous documents that will be invaluable to my research.

Then, in July, I embarked on two more field trips. First, I traveled to the city of Mokpo in southwest Chŏlla province. Mokpo was an important shipping and shipbuilding area during the Chosŏn period, and I was able to glean much important information from the National Maritime Museum located there. Also, I was able to consult Professor Kim Kyŏngok of Mokpo National University, an expert on the social and environmental history of the southern Chŏlla coastal zone. She gave me excellent advice on how to find sources and better organize my dissertation.

During my last field trip, I visited the T’aean peninsula on Korea’s western coast. There, I visited old protected pine forests that had been first established back during the Chosŏn dynasty. On Anmyŏn island off the peninsula’s western coast, I was able to visit a protected pine reserve, arboretum, and forest history museum that taught me much about how the Chosŏn government selected and conserved these forests. Most importantly, I also was able to absorb the topography and characteristics of the landscapes I will be writing about. Because space and landscape are so critical to environmental history and because the field is dedicated to the study of both anthropogenic and ecological change, no proper environmental history of late Chosŏn Korea would be complete without an eyewitness examination of the environment itself.

Finally, in August, I was able to conclude my trip by participating in a historical reenactment. For one day, I was a commander of a ceremonial guard regiment at Tŏksugung, an old Chosŏn palace. In full authentic Chosŏn-era costumes that had been painstakingly gleaned from historical archives, I participated in the changing of the guard ritual and stood guard in front of the palace gate. After weeks of peering at sources, talking to professors, and observing locations all relevant to the latter stages of a past dynasty, it was perhaps quite fitting to end my trip realistically immersed in the costume, rituals, and home of that dynasty.