Source 4 : Reply from KNMC on #120

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing this letter in response to third-party comments made by Japan and forwarded to the Republic of Korea via email by the MoW Secretariat on June 13. The comments concern The Archives of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, a nomination the Republic of Korea has submitted for evaluation during the 2022–2023 cycle. 

Upon receipt of the comments, the MoW National Committee of the Republic of Korea engaged in thorough consultations with the nominator and is now submitting on their behalf information pertaining to the comments as below. 

Among the nominated documentary materials comprising The Archives of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, nine items have been confirmed to refer to Japan or have been produced by the Japanese legation in Seoul. The majority of these nine items are publicly accessible. The details of the nine items are presented below.

Item 1. A documentary material entitled “Letters of Japanese Military Commanders” and identified as No. 30 of Section 4 in Appendix 1 of the nomination

- This is composed of letters sent by three Japanese military commanders to Yi Gyuꠓtae, the chief field commander of the Korean official troops dispatched to suppress the Donghak Peasant Army. The commander had the letters copied in 1895, which were later incorporated into official documents of the Joseon military authorities.

- The original version is under the custody of the Korea University Library. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the Donghak Peasant Revolution Information System website.

Item 2. A documentary material entitled “A Brief Record on the Suppression of the Donghak Party” and identified as No. 96 of Section 5 in Appendix 1 of the nomination.

- This material, written in Japanese, is a transcript of personal accounts given by two Japanese military officers (Lieutenants Suzuki and Nakayama) on the operation for subjugating the Donghak Peasant Army in Hwanghae-do Province. The document was incorporated into the official archive of the State Council of Joseon (Uijeongbu) in its typical documentation format.

- This original version is under the custody of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the Donghak Peasant Revolution Information System website.

Item 3. A documentary material entitled “A Brief Record on the Suppression of the Donghak Party” and identified as No. 97 of Section 5 in Appendix 1 of the nomination.

- This document consists of the accounts by Lieutenant Suzuki in the Item 2 that were edited and incorporated, as a separate item, into the official archive of the State Council of Joseon (Uijeongbu).

- The original version is under the custody of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the Donghak Peasant Revolution Information System website.

Item 4. A documentary material entitled “Provisions Supplied to Japanese Soldiers Stationed in Jinwi County” and identified as No. 65 of Section 4 in Appendix 1 of the nomination.

- This material generated by the Jinwi County office in December 1894 contains a list of provisions offered by this local office to the Japanese troops that passed through Jinwi County in June 1894.

- The original version is being kept in the collection of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the website of the holding institution.

Item 5. A documentary material entitled “Ledger of Expenses for Soldiers in Jinwi County” and identified as No. 66 of Section 4 in Appendix 1 of the nomination.

- This material was generated by the Jinwi County office in December 1894, detailing the expenses incurred to support the Korean and Japanese troops that passed through Jinwi County from September to December 1894 on their way to suppress the Donghak Peasant Army.

- The original is under the custody of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the website of the holding institution.

Item 6. A documentary material entitled “Record of Supplies for Qing and Japanese Forces in Yongin County in the Gabo Year” and identified as No. 105 of Section 4 in Appendix 1 of the nomination.

- This material was generated by the Yongin County office in January 1895. It contains a list of supplies this local office provided to Korean, Japanese, and Chinese troops from June 1894 to January 1895. 

- The original is under the custody of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the website of the holding institution.

Item 7. A documentary material entitled “Record of Supplies for Capital Guards and Japanese Forces in Yongin County and identified as No. 106 of Section 4 in Appendix 1 of the nomination

- This material was generated by the Yongin County office in February 1895. It contains a list of supplies this local office provided to the Korean and Japanese soldiers when they passed through Yongin County in January 1894.

- The original is under the custody of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. Access to the document is offered in digital form on the website of the holding institution (https://kyu.snu.ac.kr/).

Item 8. A documentary material entitled “Documents of the Japanese Legation in Korea” and identified as No. 1 of Section 5 in Appendix 1 of the nomination 

- This material, consisting of 46 volumes, is a portion of a 481-volume collection of photographic prints containing the official documents produced at the Japanese Legation in Korea from 1894 to 1910. The 46 volumes contain documents generated from 1894-1895 and directly related to the Donghak Peasant Revolution.

- The documents, originally hand-written on papers, were photographed onto glass plate negatives for preservation in the 1940s by the Korean History Compilation Committee under the Japanese Government-General of Korea. The negatives were left in Korea after World War II was over, and consequently were passed into the ownership of the Republic of Korea via the United States Army Military Government. As the negatives suffered gradual deterioration, they were printed in 1947 for the preservation of images under the support of the Hoover Institute of Stanford University. The printed version is currently under the custody of the National Institute of Korean History.

- It is not unusual for a state with a history of colonization to regard the records

produced and left behind by the colonizers as valuable documentary heritage and to inscribe them on the Memory of the World Register. Examples can be found in Colonial Archives (inscribed by Benin in 1997), Records of the French Occupation of Mauritius (inscribed by Mauritius in 1997), and Fonds of the “Afrique occidentale française” (AOF) (inscribed by Senegal in 1997).

- This material can be accessed through the Korean History Database link (http://db.history.go.kr) within the website of the holding institution, the National Institute of Korean History.

Item 9. A documentary material entitled “Notifications of the Japanese Legation” and identified as No. 2 of Section 5 in Appendix 1 of the nomination

- This material is a notice written in Chinese characters that was sent by the Japanese Legation to the municipal governments of Korea in August 1894. It relates that although Japan had decided to station soldiers in Korea, it did not intend to engage in plunder and only held a strong desire to sustain the positive relations between the two states. 

- This material is under the custody of Cheondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way) Central Headquarters. The Cheondogyo group acquired this material as part of its effort to collect records related to the Donghak Peasant Revolution. 

- Public access to the original is limited. However, a digital image of this material was published by the Cultural Heritage Administration in a press release on June 28, 2017 and is currently accessible via Google Images.

I sincerely hope that the information provided above constitutes a sufficient response to the comments made by the third party. While submitting the information, the MoW National Committee would like to request on behalf of the nominator that the MoW Secretariat continue to proceed with the expert evaluation of the nomination in accordance with Paragraph 8.6.5.2.3 of the General Guidelines.

Sincerely yours,

Chair

National Committee for Memory of the World, Republic of Korea