A Graduate Student Perspective: Mayako Liu, G3, Comp EALC-HEAL, KI Graduate Summer Research Grant, Summer 2024
Thanks to the generous support of the Korea Institute, I was able to spend a wonderfully productive summer doing research across two countries, Japan and South Korea. My research looks at the development of tourism in Korea during the wartime period of Japanese colonial rule, i.e. 1930s to 1945. This was a time when developing tourism and promoting tours to and within Korea as well as other parts of the empire became a major agenda of the colonial state. Through this research, I hope to shed new light on the colonial experience; how those living and traveling during that period conceived, identified, and experienced ‘Korea’ and ‘Koreanness.’
My main take-away this summer was learning that there was an abundance of untapped materials on this topic. Because colonial tourism-related materials are dispersed across archives and localities, researchers may have had difficulty approaching them systematically in the past. In Seoul, one place that I visited was the Seoul Archives Information Center, a branch of the National Archives of Korea which has its main archive in Daejeon. I was aware of this center for a time but was not entirely sure what I could do there or what purpose the center served. What I found was that the center does not possess its own collections but is tied to the Daejeon archive so researchers can request for materials and view them on a designated computer on site. The system is quite convenient, especially if one did not have the time to go down to Daejeon or simply needed to gather information before travelling there. Here, I was able to collect some incredibly useful references, including official statistics on travelers in and out of Korea during the colonial period. There were also some interesting materials on the management of kisaeng or Korean courtesans: another important facet of the colonial tourism industry (and in the postwar period as well.)
During my stay in Kyoto, I also made a trip to Kōrai Bijutsukan or Koryo Museum of Art, a quirky little museum in the northwest part of the city, which I had always wanted to check out because I was curious why there was a museum of this name in Kyoto. Of course, I was aware that Kyoto (and not only Osaka) had a rather large community of Korean-Japanese living in the district beyond the Kyoto station but had little idea of the connections in concrete terms. As expected, the museum was also related to this history, built under the initiative of a Korean man who had moved to Japan at a very young age during the colonial period and yearned to rediscover his heritage by collecting Korean artworks. Most interesting was their display of woodblock prints and rare illustrations of the Korean embassy to Japan in the 18th century. It was exciting to find unexpected leads to understanding the multiplicities of Korea-Japan connections in the past: a history that continues to live on in a quiet corner of Kyoto city today.
Overall, I had a very eye-opening experience this summer in terms of my research and intellectual interests. I once again would like to express my gratitude to the Korea Institute for affording me such a valuable opportunity to explore my interests.