[KS] The Korean Repository 1899

[Brother Anthony]

As is well-known, The Korean Repository was published in Seoul in English, as a monthly magazine, beginning in 1892 and then from 1895 until 1898. Image files of the RAS Reprint of the Repository have for long been available in my home page http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/Repository/index.html  however, the poor quality of the printing makes it very difficult to obtain even basic OCR texts and to transform them into corrected text files would take very long. What is less well-known is that in February 1899, H. G. Appenzeller and Geo. Heber Jones began to publish a weekly 'newspaper' under the same name. The Korean and English editions of "the Independent" newspaper had ceased with the dissolution of the "Independence Club: at the end of 1898. For less clear reasons, the "Korean Repository" had also ceased publication then. This meant that there was no source of regular news in English being published in Seoul. Therefore Appenzeller had the idea of using the Repository's name to produce a simple stop-gap newletter of just 4 pages, using whatever news was available, including international wire reports. It was available by subscription and operated on a shoestring budget. After a time they expanded the contents to 8 pages and included a little advertising to earn more revenue. Finally, the 17th issue dated June 1 1899 announced the end of publication because an agreement had been reached for a regular English newspaper again titled "The Independent" to begin publication wth H. Emberly as editor and completely separated from links to Seo Jae-pil and the defunct Independence Club.

Copies of the 1899 weekly Korean Repository are preserved in Yonsei University Library, but they lack issues number 2 and 16. I know of no other library holding any copies of the 1899 Repository and am mainly writing this to ask if anyone knows if those missing numbers exist anywhere in the world?

Given my previous work, I have now made available in my pages in html format the complete texts (without the advertisements) of the existing copies of the 1899 Korean Repository. Probably the most interesting item (the only extended piece serialized over several weeks) is an account of a journey across Jeju Island by Rev. Alex. Kenmure and Mr. A. A. Pieters, perhaps the first such visit? They had a rather hard time, in part because of the weather, and in part because of the lack of comfort.  The 1899 Repository is avaiable as individual html issues and as a single complete PDF at  http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/Repository/!899RepositoryIndex.html  I hope it will prove of interest. The main foreign news involves the ongoing war with the USA in the Philippines.

Brother Anthony
President Emeritus, RAS Korea