[KS] The Frederick Starr Collection photos

[Ross King]

Dear Brother Anthony: 
 
> Is it true that Starr's 1922-3 course on "Korean ethnography" at Chicago can be considered the first Korean Studies course to be taught in the western world?

Certainly not, assuming that one still counts Russia as belonging to the 'western world'--G. V. Podstavin was teaching courses in Korean language and on other aspects of Korean Studies from 1900-1922, meaning he had been teaching such courses for a generation before Starr ever taught his. He had prepared a substantial monograph on the Korean 'new literature' already by 1910 or so, but it was never published and has been lost. And the first Korean language courses in Russia were actually started a bit earlier, in 1897, in St. Petersburg. 

Ross
--
Ross King
Professor of Korean and Head,
Department of Asian Studies, 
University of British Columbia, 

and 

Dean, Korean Language Village, 
Concordia Language Villages

Mailing address: 
Ross King, Department of Asian Studies, UBC
Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
CANADA

vox: 604-822-2835
fax: 604-822-8937
http://www.asia.ubc.ca/people/faculty/ross-king.html