Le XIX^e Seoul Colloquium in
Korean Studies, organisé par le Centre de l’EFEO à Séoul, en collaboration
avec la Seoul Branch de la Royal Asiatic Society et l'Asiatic Research
Institute de la Korea University, a lieu le 14 juin. Il est animé par Henny
Savenije, docteur en philosophie, autour du thème Hendrick Hamel’s
report on Korea.
Hendrick Hamel’s report on Korea by Henny Savenije                                                                                   Hendrick
Hamel (1630-?) was the first foreigner to write about Korea from experience of
living within the country and for more than 200 years his account, radically
revised and translated into various languages, was the only one. B. Hoetink in
1920 published a transcription of a 17th century document he had found that was
ostensibly the original report written by Hamel himself. In the national
archives in The Hague (Den Haag) I discovered far more than Hoetink did. I then
put everything I found on the internet to receive peer to peer reviews. Since
then I have received lots of supplements and corrections. For instance, Hamel’s
death date remains open since as recently as two weeks ago Valentine Wikaard
produced compelling evidence that his generally accepted death date was open to
many doubts. In my modern Dutch translation of the report I have added Dutch
translations of several Korean documents which shed new light on other relevant
facts. There is compelling evidence that Weltevree didn’t come from De Rijp but
from Vlaardingen, for example. I shall argue that Hamel did write the document
in question but that the narrative is not exclusively his as he sometimes
writes about himself in the third person. I hope to publish a book with all the
translations I have made. I also hope to go to Jakarta to search for another
copy of the original handwritten document by Hamel since the manuscript I have
is one of the 7 copies made by scribes in then Batavia to be sent to Holland.

 séoul colloquium in korean studies