Digital Korean studies: recent advances and new frontiers
| Date | 13 August 2018 |
| Published date | 13 August 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-04-2018-0013 |
| Pages | 227-244 |
| Author | Javier Cha |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Records management & preservation,Information repositories |
Digital Korean studies: recent
advances and new frontiers
Javier Cha
Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Abstract
Purpose –This studyaims to reflect on the past and prospects of digital Korean studies.
Design/methodology/approach –Discussion includes the remarkably early adoption of computing in
the Korean humanities,the astounding pace in which Korean heritage materialshave been digitized, and the
challengesof balancing artisanal and laboratory approachesto digital research.
Findings –The main takeaway is to reconsider the widespread tendency in the digital humanities to
privilegefrequentist analysis and macro-level perspectives.
Practical implications –Cha hopes to discoverthe future of digital Korean studies in semantic networks,
graph databasesand anthropological inquiries.
Originality/value –Cha reconsidersexisting tendencies in the digital humanities and looks to the future of
digital Koreanstudies.
Keywords Digital Korean studies, Digital humanities, Korean studies, South Korea,
Digital archives
Paper type Research paper
A century ago, the French historian Marc Bloch had a well-known exchange with the
medievalist Henri Pirenne, at a conference held in Stockholm. As Bloch was about to head
out to historical sites and museums, Pirenne set out to exploreand soak in the modern and
contemporary aspects of the Swedish capital. “If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes
only for old stuff”, Bloch recalled Pirenne having said, “I am a historian, however, and
therefore I take delight in the living”(Bloch, 1953/1941, pp. 43-47)[1].The past, according to
Pirenne, does not refer to the fossils of a bygone era but to that which is in a symbiotic
relationship with the present day. That is, to the extent that the past enriches our
understanding of the present, the past should be understood from the standpoint of the
changing present situation. In a lecture I attended circa 2010, Carlo Ginzburg playfully
remarked: “Anachronismis the most powerful tool available to the historian”.
This article discusses how the anachronistic interplay between the past and thepresent
might help create a new wave of scholarship in my primary area of research: the uses of
© Javier Cha. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative
Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create
derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://
creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalco de.
The open-access license fee has been paid for by a grant from the Office of Research Affairs at
Seoul National University.
The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support provided by the Academy of Korean
Studies Competitive Research Grant (AKS-2017-R05). Special thanks to Mark Byington, Kim Baro,
Allan Cho, Kim Hyeon, John S. Lee, Rho Kyung Hee, Ryu Intae and Allison Van Deventer, and the
anonymous DLP reviewer.
Digital Korean
studies
227
Received1 May 2018
Revised5 July 2018
Accepted5 July 2018
DigitalLibrary Perspectives
Vol.34 No. 3, 2018
pp. 227-244
EmeraldPublishing Limited
2059-5816
DOI 10.1108/DLP-04-2018-0013
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2059-5816.htm
modern digital archives and computing power in the study of premodern Korea. In 2018,
South Korea boasts large collections of heritage materials captured, archived and curated,
using cutting-edge database technology. These databases have been made publicly
downloadable under a government-mandated open license policy. This unusual situation,to
my knowledge not found in any other area studies discipline, demands that Korea
specialists think creativelyand reflectively about the implications of having access to such a
staggering amount of high-quality humanities data. How should these repositories be
structured, curated, and preserved? In what ways do our existinginterpretations of Korean
history and culture change due to digitizationand digital methods? What can digital Korean
studies teach us about theadvantages and limits of data-driven humanities? Whatwould be
some effective ways of incorporating images, audio recordings, aerial photography, and 3d
scans of artifacts in the Korean humanities?
The field of Korean studies, especially outside of South Korea, has given surprisingly
limited attention to computing and digital methods. This lack of interest stands in stark
contrast to the South Korean government’smassive investments in the building of archives
and the attendant dependence of Koreanists on digitized source materials. At a recent
Association of Asian Studies annual meeting, the inaugural digital humanities working
group meeting was held; I found myself the only specialist of Korea in a room with
approximately 60 attendees.I also turned out to be the only presenter covering Korea in the
DH 2018 conference in MexicoCity[2].
Nonetheless, there are some encouraging signs. Korean studies librarians have been paying
close attention to South Korea’s digitization efforts and the digital humanities[3]. In South
Korean academia, the Korean Association for Digital Humanities (Han’guk tijit’ŏlinmunhak
hyŏbŭihoe 한국디지털인문학협의회) was established in 2015. In a few pockets, such as the
Academy of Korean Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Ajou University, the
digital humanities have been gaining traction, albeit slowly (Kim, 2016, pp. 385-388). In 2016, a
solid primer articulating a long-term vision, technical challenges, global comparisons,
pedagogy and reflections on failed efforts was published (Kim et al., 2016). To make sense of
what “digital humanities”means in the South Korean context, however, it is important to keep
in mind the legacy of a domestic phenomenon called “cultural contents studies”(Munhwa
k’ont’ench’ŭhak 문화콘텐츠학). South Korea’s impressive range of digital archives was
funded primarily to foment the media industries, such as K-pop, television drama, cinema and
video games, not necessarily to promote new types of research in the humanities.
The Korean case demonstrates that the availability of digitized materials, no matter how large
in scale and how high in quality, does not spontaneously lead to explorations in new modalities
enabled by digitization and digital technologies. Digital projects entail more than feeding big
cultural data into a computer and expecting a groundbreaking result. Many, if not most, end up
as failed experiments and lead researchers down unexpected and unforeseen paths. Months and
years of training and tedious work are needed to produce meaningful outcomes and mature
studies, which also necessitates cross-disciplinary cooperation with informatics, computer
science, statistics and other relevant fields. In addition, digital humanities scholars need to be
prepared to learn and embrace the aesthetic and storytelling aspects of digital media, such as
photography, videography, graphic design,3D modeling and animation and game engines.
Navigating the unchartedwaters of digital Korean studies appears lessdaunting once we
realize that the study of Korea’s past has been influenced by modern digital technologies in
more ways than generally recognized. Because of digitization, expectations have changed
and continue to change. In 2006, for example, the release of A Compendium of Korean
Collected Works (Han’guk munjip ch’onggan 韓國文集叢刊) as an online database was a
groundbreaking moment for manyhistorians of Korea. Only a portion of the 1,259 collected
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