[KS] Greek and Latin studies in Korea

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear All:

Very interesting facts that Professor Sung-Deuk Oak just posted … 
Greek in 1916, there are always surprises. 
A small detail: "Wuthemberg" in Germany is the "Kingdom of Württemberg 
[Wuerttemberg]" in southern Germany. The village he was born in was 
Rottenacker .. well known to historians of German and local history of 
Ohio (U.S.) as a main center for the so-called Seperatists, a radical 
pietist, political-religious group splitting from the church. 
Indirectly, the movement was quite important influence for the early 
socialist movement in Germany. In any case, most of the Separatists 
from Rottenacker emigrated around 1800 to the U.S. and continued to be 
active there. The mentioned Dr. Gelson Engel (he died a year later, by 
the way, in 1939), the founder of the Presbyterian Church in Korea, was 
from one of these Separatist's families in Rottenacker, just that his 
family had emigrated to Australia instead of the U.S. to flee from the 
pressure against their movement home in Württemberg. 

Since Ed Baker or Stephen Epstein haven't yet posted anything, just 
this bibliographic note in between:

"한국에서 외국어 교육의 역사" (History of Foreign Language Education in 
Korea) by Dr. Yi Kwang-suk (Kwang-Sook Lie, in her own rendering).
http://blog.daum.net/gangseo/17954583
or in HWP format:
http://du.german.or.kr/zs/21/06%EC%9D%B4%EA%B4%91%EC%88%99.hwp

It is a very nice summary on the wider topic of foreign language 
education in Korea, with an emphasis on German (the author, now at SNU, 
got her PhD in Germany, and also translates Korean literature into 
German). The near-absense of LATIN is interesting. But I think that the 
author (and Franklin Rausch in the earlier posting) are likely right 
on: Latin seems to have been a Catholic Church language 'only.' Some 
studies (e.g. from France) show a--for me at least--surprising number 
of very early 20th century translations from French and Russian into 
Korean, naming a couple of major Korean intellectuals who had at the 
time learned those languages. As professor Kwang-Sook Lie also 
indicates, Latin or Greek were never the languages for the educational 
elite, as was the case in Europe with its merger of state and religion, 
but these other languages very well where, because of the "opening" 
process and Western influenced reforms the country went through.

The first Latin-Korean Dictionary seems to have been published in Korea 
in 1936:
_Dictionarium Latino-Coreanum_
comp. by Laurentio Youn (alias Laurent Eulsu Youn, alias Yun Ŭl-su)
But I believe to have seen a shorter, handwritten one by the 
Benedictine monks from the late 1920s.  


Best,
Frank


--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws