[KS] William E. Skillend

[Walraven, B.C.A.]

We are saddened by the news we received from his son David that on the 21th of February, William E. Skillend, the first Korean Studies professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a pioneer of Korean Studies in Europe, has after an illness passed away peacefully at the age of 83. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE), which was constituted in 1977, and held its first conference in London. From 1982 to 1984 he was AKSE President. This was only one of the ways his activities benefited others. A conscientious and painstaking scholar he went to great lengths, for instance, to compile an annotated bibliography of all the pre-modern works of fiction he could trace in libraries all over the world. The result, his book Kodae sosŏl, offered a great quantity of essential information for other scholars and in Korea was judged so useful that it merited a pirated edition. 
He was one of the founding members who made of AKSE not just an academic association but also a circle of friends. The book AKSE dedicated to him on his 60th birthday (Twenty Papers on Korean Studies Offered to Professor W.E. Skillend) was testimony to the love and respect he inspired among his colleagues from many countries. Younger scholars who take the present state of Korean Studies for granted, will better understand how significant the contribution of Bill Skillend has been in establishing the discipline from scratch when they read the amusing piece he himself wrote about his student days in Cambridge, where he enrolled as a student of Japanese, but also laid the foundation for his career as a much loved and appreciated teacher of Korean and Korean literature: http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/deas/japanese/fifty_years.pdf 

He will be remembered these days in many places with gratitude and affection.


Boudewijn Walraven

AKSE President