Korean History in the West?

As a “westerner” who was educated in both the U.S. and briefly in the U.K., let me state first of all that it is regrettably true that for the most part Korea is ignored in western education.

The focus is on “western civilization” and ancient Asian history is only mentioned where there are direct links to the history of the west. Years ago China and India were only mentioned in because Marco Polo wrote about visiting there. The only exception was if one chose to delve further in college, but even then the options were seriously limited. Most of the western curriculum focused on Asian only in the modern era, and sometimes, with the exception of WWII, even that was only a brief surface level look. I seriously cannot remember having to even know where Japan was on the Globe. We knew China because of the USSR and because I was in school during the “Cold War”. Korea’s only mention is the “Korean Police Action” and the fact that the country remained divided with an “evil government” in the north and a democracy in the south. That’s it – nothing more. Learning what I have on my own in later years, I find it disgraceful.

Were it not for some people I met because my father trained Asian pilots, and a separate interest in Shamanism, I might still be largely ignorant of Korean history. I would probably still see Korea through the visions relayed to me by a man who was a negotiator at Panmunjom the year I was born. And that would be extremely distorted.

In higher education, depending on your field, you do start learning more about China and Japan. But it’s not necessarily just because of a bias toward those countries. Most of the material I was taught was philosophy, religion, political structure and military strategy. The reason most of that centers on just China and Japan in the west is because those are the resources most readily available. Ancient Chinese and Japanese manuscripts are widely published in English and other western languages. I still find it hard to find these types of works that have been transcribed in Hangul and then translated into English. Is it that there is not much Korean History published in English, especially on a high school level, or have I just not found a good source? People only learn from what they have access to. Hangul is not taught in most schools in the west, so unless the history is in English and put before students, Korean history and culture will remain a blank for most westerners.

A recent example of this is that despite my interest in Korean history, it was only within the past month that I learned that 100 years ago there were more Koreans in Texas than Chinese or Japanese. I knew the history of the Japanese here because of the rice fields and internment camps. And the Chinese have always been very visible. But it took being given a book by Irwin Tang (a Chinese American) to find out about the Korean communities because they have been so self-contained. Granted this is not really part of Korea’s history, but if something that close and in my own country is unknown, think how remote the information before the immigration is to us? Korean history is not usually something that comes up in casual conversation over drinks between a Korean and an American, so what is going to spark the American’s interest to learn more than is put in front of them?

(Actually I have had those conversations, but those in earshot have looked at us like we are either insane or had way too much soju.......and they may have been right on both counts.)