[KS] Re: Still doubting about the rendering of Korea prior to

[Henny Savenije]

Dear Richard and Michael.

Interesting reading and arguments, but I think indeed that the Japanese had 
made no attempts to change the name prior to 1900. If I would have send ALL 
the data between 1840 and 1900, one would see that the name Corea was 
losing little by little and lost by the 1900s There were even quite some 
authors who started with Corea in their first publications and ended with 
Korea against the 1900s. I can see no evidence indicating that this was due 
to Japanese efforts, as Michael points out,

> From my own research into Min YOng-hwan's 1896 mission to the coronation 
> of Tsar Nicholas II, I found that
>Min (as ChosOn's Minister Plenipotentiary) was received at diplomatic 
>functions before the Japanese
>representative Yamagata Aritomo. This fact caused Min considerable concern 
>as he felt that it was certain to
>offend the Japanese. His Russian assistants reassured him by telling him 
>about the Western practice of
>receiving diplomats according to the alphabetical precedence of the nation 
>that they represented.

The diplomatic language in those days was French, and in French it was 
written as Coree, Japan as Japon. Maybe they felt insulted, but since Korea 
in French is still written as Coree they seem to have no success in 
changing it. Even in the late 30s of the last century French was still the 
diplomatic language. Why would they bother to change it in English??


At 11:09 PM 5/16/00, Richard C. Miller wrote:
>Dear Michael,
>
>At 09:48 AM 5/16/00 +0100, you wrote:
> >Dear Richard Miller,
> >
> >In some respects the documents that you quote might be
> >considered to support the conspiracy theory. From 1905

<SNIP>

>I by no means deny, by the way, that by 1910 the evidence for Japanese
>government attempts to erase Korean national identity is overwhelming--what
>else would annexation represent? Before that point, however, I think the
>historical record shows much less coherence in actual Japanese government
>practice, despite the presence of a large group of politicians/military men
>who clearly wanted total control of the penninsula, with or without the
>current inhabitants. I do not believe that any of that evidence points to a
>specific Japanese government concern with anything as trivial as where the
>countries' names fell in the roman alphabet.

-----------------------------
Henny  (Lee Hae Kang)

Feel free to visit
http://www.henny-savenije.demon.nl
and feel the thrill of Hamel discovering Korea (1653-1666)

http://user.chollian.net/~savenije
Western maps about Korea (1500~1800)



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