[KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine Baker

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear Stephen, dear All:

You wrote:
>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. 
>Why then have all of them overlooked not one but 
>two references to just such a visit by one of 
>Korea's major writers?

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.


You wrote:

>There is a limit to what one can do by punching keywords into a search engine.

Yes, sure. I am the last one to deny that!
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.
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.
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?

Question to Steven.
You wrote:
>(...) if scholars who are knowledgable about 
>Baker's career can demonstrate that she was 
>somewhere other than in Asia in July of 36 then 
>it's a done deal.

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).
Thanks.


Best regards,
Frank


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