IT and Culture: Korean documents in U.S. to make digital return

More than 2,000 old documents taken from Korea to the U.S. during the Japanese colonial period will return home in digital form.

Korea University’s Research Institute of Korean Studies has announced that its Center for Rare Materials Abroad finished digitalizing 738 of the 2,200 old Korean documents in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The rest will be digitalized by the end of this year.

Recognizing the difficulties Korean researchers have in viewing the rare Korean documents stored in the U.S., the center inked an MOU with Berkeley in November 2008 to digitalize the documents. 

“The return of the royal Uigwe from Japan and France is grabbing the nation’s attention. These old documents are very valuable as well. It may not be a total redemption but digitalizing the documents and allowing easier access to them will be a big help to researchers in the field,” said Choi Yong-cheol, director of the research institute.

The documents stored at Berkeley are not only large in quantity but also highly valuable in terms of quality, according to the center. The documents range from literature, epigraphs, medical books and geography books.

The most notable collection at Berkeley is the Asami Library of classical Korean literature which includes over 900 printed books, manuscripts and rubbings. Asami Rintard, a Japanese who served as a judge in Korea during the Japanese colonial period, assembled the collection and took it to his country, where it was later sold to UC Berkeley. The collection also shows examples of early Korean movable-type printing dating back to the 17th century.

When the digitalization project is completed, it will be the largest volume of documents from the U.S. to be digitalized. Previously, the National Library of Korea had digitalized 594 old documents from the Library of Congress in the U.S., Harvard-Yenching Library and Columbia University Library.

The first batch of digitalized data will be accessible at The Academy of Korean Studies’ website (www.kostma.net) starting July 2011.