[KS] The First Westerners to Visit Korea: George C. Foulk & His Friends' Travel Records to Busan and Wonsan, June 1882

[Yoo Kwang-On]

Hello All,



On their way back to the United States for reassignments via Siberia and
Europe, Ensign George C. Foulk and two fellow naval officers seized the
opportunity to travel to Busan and Wonsan. This was less than a month after
Korea signed the "Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation" with the
United States on May 22, 1882 at Inchoen.



Arriving in Busan on June 7, 1882, they became the first Western travelers
to visit Korea. Two years later, in December of 1884 on the eve of the
Gapsin Coup (갑신정변), Foulk re-visited Busan, this time as the United States
Naval Attaché to Korea*. Another well known traveler, Isabella Bird Bishop,
landed in Busan tweleve years later in 1894.



During his six years of duty with the United States Asiatic Squadron, when
he had frequent ports of calls in Japan, Foulk became fluent in Japanese
and taught himself to read and write Chinese characters. Further, he had
enough of a basic overview on what was going on in Korea at that time to be
able to absorb quite a bit of what was going on during his visits. His
preparedness, fluency in Japanese and competency in Chinese characters
proved to be of great benefit. He conversed in Japanese with men on the
street and communicated in Chinese characters with Korean boys by writing
out questions on the ground. They answered him in the same manner. His
language skills also helped him to study and evaluate Japanese settlements
in Busan and Wonsan.



Upon their return to the United States, the U.S. Government Printing Office
published their travel report in 1983 as a U.S. federal document under the
lengthy title of:



Observations upon the KOREAN COAST, JAPANESE-KOREAN PORTS, and SIBERIA made
during a journey from THE ASIATIC STATION TO THE UNITED STATES through
SIBERIA AND EUROPE, June 3 to September 8, 1882.



I’ve made copies of the first 19 pages from this 132-year-old, very
fragile, and hard to find book, which cover the Korean portion of their
journey, and is attached hereto.



I hope to have my copy of the report on Korea stored in the [KS] archives
before the books disappears from the library shelves.



While Foulk and his two friends were in Siberia, they also observed and
recorded Russia's military designs on Korea as well as accounts of Koreans
toiling to make lives for themselves in Siberia.  It reads as follows:



*Russia's Military Designs on Korea*



Page 20 - "Even in the latitude of Vladivostok, however, the harbor is
blocked with ice in the long winters, while fogs obstruct navigation in
summer, and the Russians find that, with all the expenditure put on the
place, Vladivostok is unsuitable as a base to maintain a powerful fleet in
the Pacific, or prolonged warlike operations in the East. It is with this
fact before it that the attention of the Russian Government must have been
turned with great interest to the condition and future of Korea, with the
hope of securing one of its excellent harbors, as Fusan andGensan, or the
island of Tsushima, all of which are below the frozen latitude. The Korean
coast, and especially the harbors mentioned above, have been visited again
and again by Russian men-of-war, and an attempt was made in 1859 to obtain
a hold on Tsushima, where a small colony of Russian seamen was established
and several buildings elected on an obscure part of the coast; this
settlement was abandoned after its existence was made known by a visit to
Tsushima of the English commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Sir James Hope.
The Chinese Government was probably actuated in sending an ambassador and
fleet of gun boat with Commodore Shufeldt when he visitedInchiun to make
the treaty, by its estimation of the value of the seaports on the eastern
coast of Korea, to their rivals the Russian."



Page 25 - "At the junction of Ussuri and Amur, where the boundary line
turns southward, Khaborovka was founded, and from it a post road made
following the Ussuri and SunggachaRivers to Lake Khanka, rounding which to
the westward it continued on to the south-ward, east of the board line, to
Vladivostok. Later this road was extended to the southernmost point of the
Primorskkaya, or sea-coast province, to the Korean border, at a distance of
40 miles from which was established the military post known as Nova
Kievaskaya, or Possiette, from its situation on a bay of the latter name. "



*The Struggling Koreans in Siberia*



Page19 - "(Vladivostok)- - - on landing hired a number of porters from the
motley crowd of Chinese, Manchus, and Koreans on the wharf."



Page 21- "The population of Vladivostok was about 6,000 composed of
Russians of various classes, but chiefly military, many Manchus, Chinese
from Chefoo, Koreans, and several hundred Japanese. The laboring class was
made up chiefly of Koreans and Chinese. - - -while Koreans and the lowest
Chinese did menial labor, such as driving bullock carts, digging, etc."



Page 22 - "(Vladivostok) Near the landing place was a bazaar consisting of
a double row of shabby buildings, in which traded an unsightly rabble of
Manchus, Chinese, Koreans, and low Russians"



Page 25 - "Thus the ethnographic maps of East Siberia show a system of thin
lines of Russian habitation lying in the midst of a vast region peopled by
Manchus, Tunguse, straggling Koreans, and the more barbarous natives known
as Goldi, GilyaksOrochons, and Ainos."



Page 28 - "(Razdolnui) We learned, however, that a few Chinese and Koreans
had settled in this locality, but their fear of wandering bands of
marauding Manzas, or northern Chinese, had prompted them to live in
secluded places. As a rule these settlers have not been successful as
permanent inhabitants, even when unmolested by their marauding countrymen,
owing to the severe and protracted winters."



Page 31 - "Nikolskaya (or Nikolski), Mingled with the Russian population
were numbers of Chinese, Manzas, and Koreans traders or farming settlers
like the Russians; many of these. we were told, were voluntary Russian
subjects."



Page 32 - "(Nikolskaya) These troops with the Cossacks, were not confined
to fixed localities, being sent in detached bodies as required to protect
settlers from Chinese brigands, for the general defense of the district by
picket lines, or to prevent the Chinese, Koreans, and aboriginal people
from smuggling or trading, or establishing themselves on Russian soil
excepts in conformity with the exactions of the Russian Government."



Fifteen years later, in 1897, Isabella Bird Bishop also visited Siberia and
described the Korean settlements that were much improved by that time, in
her book "Korea and Her Neighbors".


* Professor Samuel Hawley edited two books on George C. Foulk's life in
Korea, 1884-1887.

America's Man in Korea: The Private Letters of George C. Foulk, 1884–1887,
Lexington Books, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Man-Korea-Private-1884-1887/dp/0739120980

Inside the Hermit Kingdom: The 1884 Travel Diary of George Clayton Foulk,
Lexington Books, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Hermit-Kingdom-Journal-Clayton/dp/0739120964


Yoo Kwang-On
​
 Observations Upon the Korean Coast, Japanese Korean Ports and Siberia.pdf
<https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-fXJE49EDAPdEIxbkVITGx6eDdwQ1FrZVlXN3gxcFNkOXM0/edit?usp=drive_web>
​
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