뉴스레터

Diplomatic papers refer to the entire range of official documents exchanged between countries for the purposes of negotiation. They include treaties, notifications, and declarations, which are agreements between countries or unilateral expressions of intent.

Diplomatic papers, which are records of the interactions and diplomatic protocols between countries, reflect the framework and nature of a given nation's perception of the outside world. Diplomatic papers, therefore, are important historical source materials. That is why the governments of the United States, China, Japan, and other major powers publish official diplomatic sourcebooks. Due to various reasons, however, Korea has not yet been able to do the same.

Providing basic historical source materials on Korea's diplomatic history

"Diplomatic history" commonly refers to the history of international relations in which the major powers of the West are central players. Foreign scholars studying Korean diplomatic history often have to rely on diplomatic papers published outside Korea. Needless to say, this leads to many misconceptions and distortions concerning the history of Korea's foreign relations.

The Northeast Asian History Foundation determined that there was an urgent need to collect and analyze basic source materials on Korea's diplomatic history in order to do away with such misconceptions and distortions. Since the second half of 2007, the Foundation has been actively engaged in compiling Korea's diplomatic papers from the modern period in the form of a sourcebook on diplomatic history. The Foundation is working with an editorial board (Editor-in-Chief: Kim Yong-gu, Professor, Hallym University) comprising leading experts in Korea's modern diplomatic history.

Due to Japan's improper and unjust portrayal of the 50-year period from Korea's opening of port to the Japan's forced annexation of Korea in 1910, there is an especially urgent need for a systematic collection and organization of historical source materials concerning the said time period.

In 2008, the Foundation discovered and collected key diplomatic papers from 1864 to 1872 under the theme "Joseon and Exploitative Imperialism". They were organized according to the key diplomatic events of the period—i.e., General Sherman Incident, French Campaign against Korea (1866), Oppert Incident, and the U.S. Expedition to Korea (1871), and compiled in the gisa bonmalche format (an annals history arranged chronologically and, under each date, by topic). In November 2009, the work was published in two volumes under the title Korean Diplomatic Papers of the Modern Era (近代韓國外交文書).

While other diplomatic sourcebooks focus on treaties or other very narrow sets of diplomatic papers. Therefore, there was great difficulty in using them for comprehensive surveys and for identifying the linkages between various types of diplomatic papers.

Korean Diplomatic Papers of the Modern Era Volumes I and II, on the other hand, will serve as the foundation for the study of Korean diplomatic and foreign relations history. It will be a useful reference material for Korean and overseas researchers, providing basic historical source materials for their studies.

In 2009, the Foundation set up plans for a 2-year project on "Korea's Treaties of Amity with the Great Powers". The Foundation collected and complied diplomatic papers related to modern treaties of amity-i.e., Korea-Japan Treaty of Amity, Korean-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, and Anglo-Korean Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The final proofreading work will be completed in 2010, and the work will be published in four volumes as the second installment of the Korean Diplomatic Papers of the Modern Era series.