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Korean Studies

Colonial Period

  • William Hillman Shockley Photographs, 1897-1922
    Collection contains over 2200 black-and-white images taken by W.H. (William Hillman) Shockley during his world travels as a mining engineer between the years 1896 to 1909. Shockley seems to have visited Korea at least twice: during the period of his earlier travels in China, 1897-1899, and from May to August, 1902, near present-day Pyonyang, where he surveyed the Gwendoline (Ap-unsan) gold mines. He took many photographs of remote and mountainous mining districts, taking pictures of country people in their dwellings; local and migrant workers; inhabitants and officials in villages he visited as well as street scenes and tourist locations in Seoul and Chemulpo.
  • Edward James Parrish papers, 1888-1926
    The Edward James Parrish Papers include business and personal correspondence (chiefly 1900-1921) of Parrish and of his wife, Rosa Bryan Parrish. There are also various bills, a notebook on tobacco trade in China and Japan (1894-1900), letter books (1900-1904), photograph albums, and a scrapbook created by Lily Parrish. Contains captioned postcards of Japan and Korea, including office buildings, street scenes, coal mines, and other scenery.
  • Colonial Korean Postcard Collection, 1900-1945 
    The Colonial Korean Postcard Collection is an archive of about 9000 digitized postcards of Korea from 1900 to 1945, most of which document the Colonial Period (1910-1945). During the colonial period, postcards of Korea were printed by various Japanese organizations and portrayed ancient historical sites, natural landmarks, people in traditional or modern settings, rural Korean villages and modern urban spaces, and Korean customs, etc.
  • Korean Culture and History in Pictures (1870s-1940s) 사진으로 보는 우리 문화와 역사 (Duke ID/PIN required)
    Includes 3,868 photo images of Korean culture and history from the end of Jeoson Dynasty until the liberation from Japanese rule; life, custom, landscape, architecture, and independence movement, etc. Most of images have Korean/English description.
  • Korean People in Pictures (1880s-1940s) 우리 민족의 사진첩 (Duke D/PIN required)
    Includes 1,330 photo images of Korean culture and custom from the end of Jeoson Dynasty until the liberation from Japanese rule; Seoul and its landscape, education, the Sino-Japanese War, the Russia-Japanese War, labor, culture, city, religion, and custom etc
  • Image Database of Willard Dickerman Straight and Early US-Koera Diplomatic Relations
    As an avid, well-trained photographer, sketcher and recorder, Straight took about 380 photographs and painted a very small number of sketches during his two spells in Korea in 1904 and 1905. The photographs document landscapes, urban scenes, people (both common, notable or noble ones), and, most interestingly, record numerous important events. These images together offer a unique view of the country, and a rare insight into a Korea during the very early twentieth century which - through various diplomatic and other means - was not permitted to migrate into independent nationhood at the time.
  • Sidney Gamble Photographs: 1917-1932, nearly 5000 images of China, Korea, Japan, Hawaii, San Francisco, and Russia.
  • Korean Church History in Pictures (1594-1984) 사진으로 보는 한국 교회사
  • National Archive of Korea 국가기록원
    Provides a searchable database which includes 2.7 million archival sources including documents on the colonial period, audio-visual and photographs, and serials from government and non-government sources. It also holds presidential archives, foreign documents related to Korea, oral histories, etc.
  • The History of Korean Independence Movement Online 한국독립운동사정보시스템
    A comprehensive information system which offers online access to materials held in the Independence Hall of Korea. This searchable database provides full texts.
  • Gelatin Dry Plates in Custody of the National Museum of Korea 국립중앙박물관 소장 조선총독부박물관 유리건판
    A digitized photographic plates containing photographs held by Museum of Japanese Government General of Korea during the Japanese colonial period. The photographs were made between 1909 and 1945 as part of a military survey commissioned by the Japanese Government General of Korea during the Japanese colonial peirod. The survey comprised 38,000 photographs with historic sites, relics,  folklore, and nature environment including about 800 of the palaces.
  • 국립중앙박물관 소장 유리건판 : 1. 궁궐
    Gelatin dry plates in custody of the National Museum of Korea : the royal palaces of Joseon
  • 서울대학교 박물관 소장 식민지시기 유리건판
    Glass plates in Seoul National University Museum: colonial period of Korea

Colonial Korean Postcard Collection, 1900-1945 
Colonial Korean Postcard Photo Collection includes about 9000 digitized postcards of Korea from 1900 to 1945, portraying ancient historical sites, natural landmarks, people in traditional or modern settings, rural Korean villages and modern urban spaces, and Korean customs. During the colonial period (1910-1945), postcards of Korea were printed by various Japanese organizations. The postcard's date, image, postal information and brief text provide us not only with a document of a particular historical moment and context, but also a view of the geopolitical circumstances surrounding Korea's emergence as a colonized destination for Japanese tourists. Some postcards were also carefully hand-colored by a professional artist.

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This collection includes a rich of collection of materials published between Korea’s enlightenment period and the 1960s— including rare monographs, newspapers and journals, as well as scrap books of various kinds—that reveal Korea’s intellectual and cultural inheritance from the end of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Korean War (1950).

Journal Archives 근현대잡지자료

  • 83 Journals/Magazines
  • 1906-1955

Serial Novel in Newspaper 신문연재소설 (Duke ID/PIN required)

  • 35 long novels
  • 77 short novels
  • 1930s-1940s

Subjects: Asian Studies