After the opening of the Chosŏn Dynasty to foreign powers in 1876, European interest in the Korean peninsula included the collection of objects of material culture, art and science. Ethnographic museums began to collect strategically by commissioning...
After the opening of the Chosŏn Dynasty to foreign powers in 1876, European interest in the Korean peninsula included the collection of objects of material culture, art and science. Ethnographic museums began to collect strategically by commissioning Europeans living in Korea to acquire Korean material culture. The image of Korean culture in Europe was shaped by Korean and European intermediaries. Research therefore requires a transcultural approach that includes Korean and European perspectives. This article focuses on the perspectives of the Korean Sirhak scholar and historian Yu Tŭkkong (柳得恭, 1748 - 1807) and the German physician, anthropologist and ethnologist Georg Thilenius (1868 - 1937) on late Chosŏn Dynasty culture. Yu Tŭkkong is the author of the Kyŏngdo chapchi (Capital Miscellany, 京都雜志), a Korean primary source from the late 18th or early 19th century that lists and explains the material culture of the upper class of late dynastic Korean society and describes holidays, festivals and customs. In his position as director of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology, nowadays Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Kunste der Welt (MARKK), Georg Thilenius wrote a multi-page wish list to a collector in Korea of objects he wanted to add to the museum's collection in the early twentieth century. By filtering out the categories and subcategories of Korean material culture mentioned by the authors, corresponding ontologies can be created. This helps to understand the different views of Korean material culture: Yu's indigenous view on culture and Thilenius' Eurocentric view. For this article, headgear and artworks have been selected as exemplary objects to demonstrate the results and the influence on the image of late Chosŏn dynasty culture from the Korean and European perspectives.