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--></style><title>Re: [KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine
Baker</title></head><body>
<div>Dear Stephen, dear All:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>You wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>As to Frank's assertion that due to the
digitalization of so many colonial sources, references to a Baker
visit to Korea could not go overlooked, actually makes my point for
me.<b> Why then have all of them overlooked not one but two references
to just such a visit by one of Korea's major writers?</b></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>TWO references? We have already proven that the Tonga ilbo
reference you referred us to is an very short report about Baker
visiting troops in Europe, not Asia! Why are you then STILL saying now
that someone overlooked TWO "reports" to a Baker visit in
Korea? And the other text we have been discussing here--that text has
long been known and obviously, as I know by now, been reproduced in
several new editions of Yi's work. You will also find some secondary
comments about that, but by literature scholars only. As far as I can
see (please provide bibliographic info, if I should be wrong about
this) no historian or music specialist has yet gotten his feet wet and
gone as far as to state in in writing that this was a factual report,
that Baker was in Korea and even performed in Korea.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>You wrote:</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>There is a limit to what one can do by
punching keywords into a search engine.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Yes, sure. I am the last one to deny that!</div>
<div>Still, the 20th century was the century of the specialists and
their exclusive and opinionated knowledge, and the 21st is the century
of the Internet ... and I am happy to sell it to you :) Seriously, I
do expect a 21st century scholar to be at least side-by-side with
Facebook and Google, not three steps behind. The "scholar"
is not anymore privileged and ahead now, is he? The privileges of
knowledge are being redistributed just like the economic riches. As a
reader and world citizen I can google, yahoo!, and naver all those
20th century published wisdoms in minutes or hours. And what I get
there is, by now, 2011, far more than just simple Wikipedia facts. I
can get a whole rounded picture about whole subject areas I was not
familiar with before.</div>
<div>T-h-e-r-e-f-o-r-e, punching the right keywords into the right
search fields and of course locating the relevant data bases to use,
is that not a 'must', a very essential part of today's knowledge for
any student and researcher. Seeing many of the questions on/to this KS
List I have my doubts that this is the case.</div>
<div>Applied to this thread, this discussion on the issue of Baker
visiting Korea and performed in Chôngjin or not, I am missing both,
a "classical" literary analysis of the Chogwang text (Yi's
text) in good old 20th century fashion as well as factual research
that comes up with clear evidence for or against such a visit--e.g.
newspaper of magazine reports from 1936 (for which we have all the
necessary tools on our hands via the Internet). NOTE that with this
Korean Studies List you get very likely more readers (readers who
actually read) than with most published scholarly articles. Just
stating that there was a Korean writer who in 1936 wrote a text
describing in two paragraphs a performance by Baker and taking that
alone as evidence for an actual historic event, that just is not
enough. Korean Studies as a field should be capable of more than just
that--that is what any undergrad student could do. I truly do not need
any scholar or specialist to tell something like that, if in the end,
it is nothing but an opinion. Where are our field specific
tools?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Question to Steven.</div>
<div>You wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>(...) if scholars who are knowledgable
about Baker's career can demonstrate that she was somewhere other than
in Asia in<b> July of 36</b> then it's a done deal.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Why that month? Is there a hint (that I might have not seen) in
the text, or another text by Yi, that points to July 1936? Maybe
something very obvious ... I just do not see that (yet).</div>
<div>Thanks.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best regards,</div>
<div>Frank</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>--------------------------------------<br>
Frank Hoffmann<br>
http://koreaweb.ws</div>
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