¡®Early Korea studies are vibrant and
relevant¡¯
Most Korean people must have memories from
their school days of trying to memorize important dates and names from Korean
history for exams.
They may feel that learning about Korean history, especially early history,
might be more boring than any other study.
In Boston, however, the Korea Institute of Harvard University¡¯s approach
to helping students learn about early Korea can be current, vibrant and
relevant, said Mark Byington, director of the Early
Korea Project.
The project is one of the major programs at Harvard University aimed at
studying Korean history prior to the 10th century.
The Early Korea Project was established in
November 2006 under the direction of Byington with
support from the Academy of Korean Studies and the Korea Foundation.
¡°Too often, when people have to learn about early Korea in Korea, they
feel bored, saying ¡®that¡¯s so long ago. You can¡¯t get more
boring than that,¡¯¡± said Byington at his
office at the Center for Government and International Studies where the Korea
Institute is located.
¡°But we take a different approach. We try to focus on controversies and
issues of dispute where you have many different ways of looking at a particular
problem in early history or archeology,¡± he said.
Recently, Korean historical TV drama ¡°Jumong,¡±
depicting the life of founder of Goguryeo Kingdom,
gained international popularity and was aired in more than 20 countries.
However, the drama reportedly contained some distorted facts about Goguryeo history and it is becoming a problem, according to
Byington.
¡°That¡¯s not their intention but people learn more from historical
dramas than they do from the textbooks today ... Relevance of studying Early
Korea becomes very clear when we see that people care about this,¡± he
said.
¡°We¡¯re learning how earliest Korean states were formed and early
relationships with other states ¡ª be that Chinese or Japanese ¡ª and
people are always interested in the Goguryeo
dispute,¡± he said.
The 47-year-old scholar shared the story of how his career path changed from
computer science engineer to Korean history scholar.
Born in 1963 in Georgia, Byington joined the Air
Force in high school and traveled around some parts of the world. He first
visited Korea in 1983 and after that he stayed a couple of years in Korea,
which changed his career course 180 degrees a decade later.
After four years in the Air Force, he specialized in computer science from 1986
to 1990 but minored in Asian studies because of his experience in Korea. After
graduation, he worked for IBM for several years.
However, in his spare time, he studied Korean history and taught himself the
Korean language.
During the last four years before quitting as an engineer, he spent his spare
time translating ¡°Samguksagi,¡± a
historical record of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, into English, although no one
was paying him to do so.
At that time, he could not find any reliable material on Goguryeo.
So, he went to China to study the kingdom and found it
¡°eye-opening¡± that the Chinese saw Goguryeo
in a different way to the Koreans, he said.
In 1994, he abandoned his career as an engineer and went to Harvard even though
no one was teaching early Korean history there yet.
¡°I was accepted and I immediately gave up my career and I¡¯ve never regretted that,¡± he said.
Why does he like it so much? Byington could not give
a clear answer but shared a special memory of spending his summers during
college traveling in Korea without an itinerary.
He would go from one town to the next, visiting historical sites and talking
with the locals. He would stop at a field where farmers were resting and eating
strawberries with makgeolli after harvest.
¡°Although people did not know who I was or where I was from, they would
welcome me and it was a very touching experience,¡± he said.
One day, he was on his way from Daegu to Gyeongju. And a taxi driver in Daegu,
who picked him up from a bus terminal and drove him to a hotel, suggested he
take Byington to Gyeongju
next day without asking any pay, saying ¡°tomorrow is my day off,¡±
in pure hospitality.
When the driver took him to Gyeongju, Byington explained all he knew about history of Gyeongju to the Korean man in Korean.
Refusing to be treated for dinner, the driver said he learned a lot and just
drove off.
Now, his mission is to bring studies of early Korea into the English language
in a very systematic way and encourage people to go beyond it, he said.
The biggest achievement of the Early Korea Project is Harvard University Korea
Institute¡¯s publication of a series of books on states in the early
history of Korea.
The latest book ¡°State and Society in
Middle and Late Silla,¡± based on two-part
workshop series at the University of Hawaii in June 2009, and at Harvard in
August 2009, looks at some fundamental questions about the nature of the Silla state and its society from a broad perspective.
¡°With this book, people who are interested in early Korea don¡¯t
have to suffer, like I did. Even if they don¡¯t focus on Korea, they can
use this book for their research,¡± Byington
said.
The Korea Foundation recently renewed its three-year financial support for the
Early Korea Project which will be guaranteed until 2013 but the Korea Institute
wants to perpetuate it, he said.
¡°Korean studies have been lagging behind for so long but they are picking
up now, largely because of Korea¡¯s efforts and natural progress in
globalization.¡±
Source: The Korea Herald