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 PALGRAVE SERIES IN ASIAN GERMAN STUDIES

Transnational
Encounters between
Germany and Korea
AFFINITY IN CULTURE AND
POLITICS SINCE THE 1880S

edited by joanne miyang cho

and lee m. roberts
 Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies

Series Editors
Joanne Miyang Cho
William Paterson University of New Jersey
Wayne, NJ, USA

Lee M. Roberts
International Language Culture Studies Department
Indiana University-Purdue University
Fort Wayne, IN, USA
This series contributes to the emerging field of Asian-German Studies
by bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from international schol-
ars in a variety of fields. It encourages the publication of works by spe-
cialists globally on the multi-faceted dimensions of ties between the
German-speaking world (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and German-
speaking enclaves in Eastern Europe) and Asian countries over the past
two centuries. Rejecting traditional notions of West and East as seem-
ing polar opposites (e.g., colonizer and colonized), the volumes in this
series attempt to reconstruct the ways in which Germans and Asians
have cooperated and negotiated the challenge of modernity in various
fields. The volumes cover a range of topics that combine the perspec-
tives of anthropology, comparative religion, economics, geography, his-
tory, human rights, literature, philosophy, politics, and more. For the
first time, such publications offer readers a unique look at the role that
the German-speaking world and Asia have played in developing what is
today a unique relationship between two of the world’s currently most
vibrant political and economic regions.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14664
 Joanne Miyang Cho · Lee M. Roberts
Editors

Transnational
Encounters between
Germany and Korea
Affinity in Culture and Politics Since the 1880s
Editors
Joanne Miyang Cho Lee M. Roberts
William Paterson University International Language Culture
of New Jersey Studies Department
Wayne, NJ, USA Indiana University-Purdue University
Fort Wayne, IN, USA

Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies

ISBN 978-1-349-95223-6 ISBN 978-1-349-95224-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95224-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943466

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America, Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Joanne Miyang Cho and Lee M. Roberts

Part I An Overview

2 130 Years of German-Korean Relations 27

Eun-Jeung Lee and Hannes B. Mosler

Part II German-Korean Relations before 1945

3 Paul Georg von Möllendorff: A German Reformer in

Korea 53
Eun-Jeung Lee

4 Franz Eckert and Richard Wunsch: Two Prussians in

Korean Service 79
Hans-Alexander Kneider

5 Specters of Schinkel in East Asia: Berlin, Tokyo, and

Seoul from a Viewpoint of Modernity/Coloniality 99
Jin-Sung Chun

v
vi Contents

Part III A Common Fate in the Cold War Era and Beyond

6 Korean-German Relations from the 1950s to the 1980s:

Archive-Based Approach to Cold War-Era History 133
Sang-Hwan Seong

7 Luise Rinser’s Third-World Politics: Isang Yun and

North Korea 159
Joanne Miyang Cho

8 Liminal Visions: Cinematic Representations of the

German and Korean Divides 177
Bruce Williams

9 The “Ignorant” Other: Popular Stereotypes of North

Koreans in South Korea and East Germans in Unified
Germany 195
Aaron D. Horton

10 Illusions of Unity: Life Narratives in Eastern German

and North Korean Unification Literature 215
Birgit Susanne Geipel

Part IV The Migration of Ideas and People

11 Depictions of the Self as Korean in German-Language

Literature by Mirok Li and Kang Moon Suk 237
Lee M. Roberts

12 Endstation der Sehnsüchte: Home-Making of Return

Gastarbeiter Migrants 259
Suin Roberts

13 History As a Mirror: Korea’s Appropriation of

Germany’s Experience in Rectifying the Past 279
Ho-Keun Choi
 Contents vii

14 Goethe’s Faust in the South Korean Manhwa The Tarot

Café: Sang-Sun Park’s Critical Project 303
Kyung Lee Gagum

Index 321
 Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Joanne Miyang Cho is Professor and Chair of History at William

Paterson University, New Jersey. She is co-editor of Transcultural
Encounters between Germany and India (2014), Germany and China
(2014), Transnational Encounters between Germany and Japan (2016),
and Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia (2017). She is a co-
editor of the Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies.
Lee M. Roberts is Associate Professor of German at Indiana University -
Purdue University, Fort Wayne, and co-editor of the Palgrave Series in
Asian German Studies. He specializes in Asian-German Studies. His
publications include Literary Nationalism in German and Japanese
Germanistik (2010) and chapters in Germany and China (2014),
Transnational Encounters between Germany and Japan (2016), and
Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia (2017).

Contributors

Ho-Keun Choi is Professor of Modern Western History at Korea

University. He has published articles in Korean on the Holocaust
(“Holocaust: A Black Box of Western Civilization” in 2006 and
“Genocide: A History of Massacres and their Concealments” in 2005) as

ix
x Editors and Contributors

well as a book, History Education in Germany (2010). Moreover, he has

published comparative studies of Holocaust education around the world.
Jin-Sung Chun is Professor at Busan National University of Education.
His doctoral dissertation (Humboldt University in Berlin), which the-
matized the West German Strukturgeschichte, was published by R.
Oldenbourg Verlag (2000). His area of study is the intellectual history
of modern Germany and historical theory. He is the author of numer-
ous books. His latest book, Sang Sang ui Athene, Berlin Tokyo Seoul
(Imagined Athens, Berlin-Tokyo-Seoul, 2015), deals with transcontinen-
tal urban history.
Kyung Lee Gagum is a Ph.D. Candidate ABD of German Studies at
the University of Arizona. She is currently working on her dissertation.
Her research interests are the literary influences of German canonical
works in Korean and Japanese graphic novels and dual identity formation
of Korean guest workers in Germany.
Birgit Susanne Geipel is a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature
at the University of California, Riverside, writing her dissertation on
Korean and German discourses of unification. She received her MA from
the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, and has also done research
at Seoul National University. Her research interests include Korean,
German, and Asian-American literature and film.
Aaron D. Horton specializes in modern German and East Asian cul-
tural history. He is Assistant Professor of History at Alabama State
University. He is particularly interested in the confluence of identity and
popular culture in literature, film, music, and sport. He is the author
of POWs, Der Ruf, and the Genesis of Group 47: The Political Journey of
Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter (2014).
Eun-Jeung Lee is head of the Institute of Korean Studies at the Freie
Universität Berlin (Germany). She is a political scientist by training and
majored in German political thought. She has published several books
in German including Sŏwŏn - Konfuzianische Privatakademien in Korea.
Wissensinstitutionen der Vormoderne (Frankfurt a.M. 2016) and Ostasien
denken. Diskurse zur Selbstwahrnehmung Ostasiens in Korea, Japan und
China (Baden-Baden 2015).
Hans-Alexander Kneider studied Koreanology, National Economy,
and Economy of East Asia at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, and
 Editors and Contributors xi

attended a Ph.D. course at Seoul National University in the Department

of Korean History. He is now working as a full professor in the German
Department as well as in the Graduate School of Interpretation and
Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.
Hannes B. Mosler is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of East
Asian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). He is a political scien-
tist by training and majored in Korean politics. His recent publications
include Sarajin chigudang, kongjŏng-hanŭn chŏngdang kaehyŏk [Local
party chapters disappeared, party reforms remain idle] (Koyang, 2013),
and “Judicialization of Politics and the Korean Constitutional Court,”
Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (2014).
Suin Roberts is Associate Professor of German at Indiana University
- Purdue University, Fort Wayne. She received her Ph.D. from the
University of California Berkeley (2005). Her publication topics
and research interests include Korean migrants and guest workers in
Germany, migrant identity, and concepts of belonging. She is the author
of Language of Migration. Self- and Other-Representation of Korean
Migrants in Germany (2012).
Sang-Hwan Seong is Professor of German and Chair of the Department
of German Language Education at Seoul National University. After
receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, he worked
as a visiting professor in the Department of Korean at the University
of Bonn (1998–2005). His recent publication topics include Korean
­education, multicultural education in Europe in relation to Koreans, and
comparative work on German, English, and Dutch.
Bruce Williams is Professor in the Department of Languages and
Cultures of William Paterson University. He has published extensively
in the areas of film theory, national cinemas, and post-communist film.
He is the author (with Keumsil Kim Yoon) of Two Lenses on the Korean
Ethos: Key Cultural Concepts and Their Appearance in Cinema.
 List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 (top) Proposal for Neue Wache 103

Fig. 5.2 Plan for Forum Japanum 111
Fig. 5.3 Proposal for the Japanese Parliament Building 112
Fig. 5.4 The National Supreme Court 112
Fig. 5.5 Ministry of Justice 113
Fig. 5.6 (top) Nihonbashi 114
Fig. 5.7 Bank of Japan, courtyard, photographed by author 115
Fig. 5.8 The Japanese National Diet Building, front photographed
by author 117
Fig. 5.9 (top) Keijō branch of Oriental Development Company 119
Fig. 5.10 The Japanese General Government Building in Chosǒn 120

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Joanne Miyang Cho and Lee M. Roberts

This volume contributes to the emerging field of Asian-German stud-

ies by bringing together internationally respected scholars from three
continents for an interdisciplinary collection of chapters covering cul-
tural, political, and historical intersections of Germany and Korea from
the late nineteenth century until well into the twenty-first century.
Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea treats the history
of the German-Korean relationship with a focus on the nations’ percep-
tions of each other from the start of diplomatic intercourse in 1883,
through the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910–1945), the Cold War,
German reunification, to the present. Examination especially of the
increasing number of commonalities between formerly divided Germany
and presently divided Korea allows this volume to showcase aspects of
a transnational relationship that arguably makes Germany and Korea as

J.M. Cho (*)

History Department, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA
L.M. Roberts
Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, IN, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 1

J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts (eds.), Transnational Encounters between
Germany and Korea, Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95224-3_1
2 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

similar as Germany and Japan, two countries for which scholars have
found countless grounds for comparison since the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Like previous volumes on Germany and China and Germany and
Japan in the Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies,1 this volume
emphasizes transnational encounters, as they apply to Germany and
Korea, while making a gesture toward more clearly comparative studies.
With chapters covering such topics as culture, diplomacy, education, his-
tory, migration, literature, film, philosophy, politics, and the stereotypes
that have come from cultural division, this book seeks to move beyond
traditional dichotomies between East and West and expose deeper affini-
ties between the two nations, despite the differing ways that each has
navigated the challenges of modernity.
Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea presents vari-
ous overt commonalities of experience between Germany and Korea
from the late nineteenth century to the present, while also teasing out
many of the more subtle similarities between these two nations on
nearly opposite sides of the globe. In the latter half of the nineteenth
century, Germany and Korea were arguably as different as two nations
could be, but their relationship began through both the German explo-
ration of East Asia and also the Korean study of German as a language of
European culture and scientific achievement. Indirectly, the relationship
continued via Japanese occupation (1910–1945), since Japan had long
held Germany (especially Prussia) to be a model for its own project of
Westernization. Over the course of the late nineteenth century and first
half of the twentieth century, Korea repeatedly witnessed the impact of
German culture on their increasingly powerful Asian neighbor in Japan’s
successes against the other two major cultural forces in the region, China
and Russia.
Within a few years after the end of World War II, both nations became
divided due to Cold War politics. South Korea and West Germany, on
the one hand, and North Korea and East Germany, on the other hand,
began to develop special relationships. The South Korean-West German
relationship became cemented through their common Cold War divi-
sion, South Koreans’ strong interest in German culture and scholar-
ship, as well as through West Germany’s recruitment of South Korean
Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in the 1960s and 1970s. However, their
relationship was briefly tested due to the East Berlin Espionage Affair in
the late 1960s. In recent years, the rapid growth of the South Korean
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

economy has deepened their economic ties. In the 1950s and 1960s,
East German and North Korean relations became close through
­economic aid and on the basis of educational and technical ties. From
around that time, however, due to Kim Il-Sung’s Juche (“self-reliance”)
ideology, North Koreans increasingly pursued an independent course
in their economy and politics, which ultimately led to the weakening of
North Korea’s relationship with the former Soviet bloc countries, includ-
ing East Germany. This shared tension of the Koreas and Germanies
over being torn apart according to different ideologies not only grounds
deeper comparison of Germany and Korea, but also unifies the various
chapters of this volume. One day we may find that the lessons that reuni-
fied Germany has had to learn provide the perfect model for North and
South Korea, should they strive simply to become “Korea” once again.
This volume grapples with questions of entangled history to explore
the ways in which Germany and Korea are united in their struggle to
achieve a sense of cultural unity and ultimately to overcome the effects
of political division. Moreover, Transnational Encounters between
Germany and Korea participates in recent developments in scholar-
ship on the German-speaking world and East Asia, as evidenced in
various books about Germany and China and Germany and Japan. To
name just a few cases in point, we find Christian Spang and Rolf-Harald
Wippich’s Japanese-German Relations (2006), Qinna Shen and Martin
Rosenstock’s Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia
(2014), and Veronika Fuechtner and Mary Rhiel’s Imagining Germany
Imaging Asia (2013).2 In addition, Suzanne Marchand’s well known
work German Orientalism in the Age of Empire (2009)3 has created a
more general context within which to place the aforementioned publica-
tions on more specific topics that treat Asian-German relations.
In the following pages of this introduction, we will explain our trans-
national framework, present a historiographical overview of Korean-
German relations, and point out key arguments of chapters in this
volume. For scholars of German-Korean relations, this volume will seek
to offer an English-language overview of many well-known points harder
to find in one single volume for an English-reading audience. For the
many who have little prior knowledge of the unusual series of conjunc-
tions between these two peoples and cultures, the volume will endeavor
to initiate an ever broader scholarly debate on the innumerable points of
contact between the German-speaking world and the Koreas.
4 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

The Transnational Framework

During the last two decades, historians have become greatly interested in
transnational history. Nowadays one frequently hears of “a transnational
turn.”4 The primary goal of this turn is to overcome Eurocentricism or
“a narrative of the ‘Rise of the West.’”5 In North America, many uni-
versities have changed their general education requirement from Western
Civilization to World Civilization, which transnational historians have
welcomed.6 In parallel with this curricular development, historians who
are based in North America have actively pursued the study of trans-
national history and global history in their scholarship, producing an
impressive array of works. In terms of the study of transnational history,
one of the most important contributions is The Palgrave Dictionary of
Transnational History (2009). It was co-edited by the North American
historians Pierre-Yves Saunier and Akira Iriye.7 This book has about
400 entries on the topic by 350 authors from about 25 countries.8 It
is no exaggeration to claim that it is something of “a landmark in the
emergence of the sub-field, just as it is a key source on transnational
historiography.” As a reference work, this book functions as “a way of
mainstreaming and standardizing academic knowledge.”9 Each of these
two editors of The Palgrave Dictionary also authored a theoretical work
on the topic, solidifying their contributions to the field.10 In addition,
other US-based historians, such as Charles Bright and Michael Geyer,
Jerry Bentley, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Patrick Manning, Arif Dirlik, and
Dipich Chakrabarty, have significantly enriched the study of transnational
or global history.11
Even though there is no requirement for World Civilization in under-
graduate education in Germany that is equivalent to what one finds in
the United States, one can see signs of a gradually globalizing histori-
cal curriculum. What is quite notable is the scholarly productivity of
some transnational historians. German historians who received training
in Asian history, such as Jürgen Osterhammel, Dominic Sachsenmaier,
and Sebastian Conrad,12 have been particularly active in this area. Some
historians who are connected to the program “Asia and Europe in a
Global Context” at the University of Heidelberg have also contributed
to the understanding of transnational and transcultural history.13 Yet it is
becoming hard to maintain the aforementioned national division due to
increasing cooperation between North American and German historians,
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

as can be seen in Akira Iriye and Jürgen Osterhammel’s series co-editor-

ship on the six-volume work A History of the World.14
Before discussing some key characteristics of transnational history,
we will briefly explain two related terms, global and transnational his-
tory. Most historians use global and transnational history interchange-
ably, but some express a slight preference for one over the other. Various
German historians, for example, have shown a preference for global his-
tory over transnational history. While viewing global and transnational
history as being “very close” in practice, Conrad points out that trans-
national history is open to certain criticisms. It simply has insufficient
global contexts, and it conceptually reconnects to the nation.15 Likewise,
Sachsenmaier and Osterhammel prefer global history over world history
or transhistory.16 Yet historians who are connected to “Asia and Europe
in a Global Context” more frequently employ transnational or transcul-
tural than global. Marrgit Pernau uses transnational and Madeleine
Herren and her co-authors prefer transculturality, due to its emphasis on
cultural flow between cultures.17
Compared to Germany, in North America, there is less consensus
about global history and transnational history, for historians appear to
be fairly equally divided between the two. The aforementioned leading
reference work in the field, The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational
History (2009), bears “transnational” in the title. In Transnational
History, Saunier uses transnational history to mean the last 200–
250 years, while applying “global” to the period since 1500.18 Iriye
views global and transnational nearly interchangeably in Global and
Transnational History.19 A roundtable in the American Historical Review
(2006) is entitled “Transnational History.”20 Nevertheless, other leading
theorists in the field employ global history in their titles.21 Like some of
the theorists mentioned above, we regard transnational and global his-
tory as quite interchangeable, but we prefer using transnational history
for this volume because of its emphasis on the “exchange process,”22
“individuals in various contexts,”23 and “a sense of movement.”24
What are some key characteristics of transnational history? First, schol-
ars who engage in transnational study reject social and comparative his-
tory for neglecting any connectedness between cultures. Transnational
historians in Germany, for instance, reject the nation-focus of social his-
torians, especially Hans-Ulrich Wehler.25 Eckert offers the critique that
“the overall importance of the Holocaust and the German Sonderweg”26
6 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

in their scholarship leaves little room for intercultural dimensions. By

assuming the singularity of each national culture, Conrad contends, his-
torians have failed to see global dimensions of 19th-century Germany
(a point that also applies to Europe and East Asia).27 Similarly, American
historian Iriye pillories American social historians’ emphasis on America’s
national exceptionalism.28 Like German global historians, Iriye has
also criticized Alltagesgeschichte (everyday history) for its local focus.29
Similarly, the historian Andrew Zimmerman criticizes both American
social historians (for American exceptionalism) and German social his-
torians (for German Sonderweg). He disputed the latter, since domestic
politics were not the main determinant in German overseas expansion.30
Secondly, transnational historians reject comparative history, since,
like social history, it focuses on nationally/civilizationally unique quali-
ties and thus fails to show the interconnectedness between them.31
Comparative historians see their nation/civilization as different from
other nations/civilizations. They separate Western development from
the rest of the world on the grounds of qualities allegedly unique to the
West. Monica Juneja and Margrit Penau have criticized Hans Ulrich
Wehler’s phrase “comparison as the highest form of social historical
research,” since comparisons between civilizations could “lead to essen-
tializing models or purely impressionistic observations and generaliza-
tions.” 32 While we agree with the essence of these global historians’
critique of comparative history, we plead for one caveat. We do not con-
sider transcultural history and comparative history as necessarily exclusive
of each other. Indeed, comparative history can shed light on some his-
torical topics. According to Saunier, the debate on this matter has been
settled, because one can use both approaches in order to “answer differ-
ent questions.”33 After all, transnational historians “have to understand
what happens to the ties and flows they follow through different polities
and communities.”34 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka have put
forward similar arguments. Both types of history are “compatible and
have many points of contact.”35
In contrast to social historians and comparative historians, global or
transnational historians emphasize connectedness. For this endeavor, his-
torians have employed various terms—“history as entanglement,” “mod-
ern history as an ensemble of interweaving,” and “commonalities and
the exchange relationships of the world.”36 The authors of Transcultural
History focus on “contact zones, adaptation and exchange processes,
modes of translations, and moments of crossing borders in a global
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

context.”37 Within this framework, Osterhammel has highlighted inter-

connections between Asia, Europe, and Africa.38 Iriye has sought cross-
cultural connections and “relevance to the whole of humanity.”39 Shalini
Randeria has suggested replacing a comparative model between Western
and non-Western societies with “a relational perspective that foregrounds
processes of historical and contemporary unequal exchanges.”40 Randeria
and Conrad have argued that during the nineteenth century, Europe and
non-Europe became “indissolubly interwoven,” and thus they view it as
“the starting point of a historiography of global history.”41

The Historiography
Even though research on German-Korean relations has a somewhat brief
history, since the 1980s it has produced many works on both Korea
and also the German-speaking world. Especially in recent years, general
interest in the two countries has grown much, as we will see below. In
the following, we consider publications in three languages—German,
Korean, and English. There are more works in German and Korean than
in English, and thus this volume is an important addition to Korean-
German scholarship in English. In addition to the list presented here,
there are also numerous studies published in Germany, South Korea, and
North America as topically related articles and dissertation theses, which
suggest the possibility of continued growth, but these works largely have
not been included in this overview.
German-language works in various disciplines that cover the German-
Korean exchange have placed some weight on the division of the two
countries. The title of Volker Grabowsky’s Zwei-Nationen-Lehre oder
Wiedervereiniging? (Two-nation model or reunification? 1987) clearly
communicates such well-known associations with the common political
fate of Germany and Korea throughout much of the second half of the
twentieth century.42 Similarly, Won-myoung Lee’s Zur Frage der Nation
und der Wiedervereinigung (On the question of the nation and reuni-
fication, 1989) suggests a search for wholeness that might bring North
and South Korea back together on the model of reunified Germany.43
Some more recent publications, edited volumes by Hartmut Koschyk
(1990) and Klaus Stüwe and Eveline Hermannsede (2011), suggest that
there is room for hopeful views of the future, with respect to the North-
South Korean divide.44 In contrast to these comparative studies, several
recent works focused on actual contacts in German-Korean transnational
8 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

relations. Hans-Alexander Kneider’s Globetrotter, Abenteurer, Goldgräber

(Globetrotter, Adventurer, Golddigger) (2009) gives a comprehen-
sive account of Germans in Korea during the Yi dynasty. Eun-Jeong
Lee and Hannes B. Mosler’s recent book Facetten deutsch-koreanischer
Beziehungen (Facets of German-Korean relations, 2017) is noteworthy
because it traces the 130-year relations between these two countries.45
Another pair of related topics taken up repeatedly in German-
language publications is migration and the question of identity. A num-
ber of studies from both before and also after German reunification in
1990 offers insight into the cultural differences Koreans have encoun-
tered in Germany. From graduate-level dissertations, like Tai-Soon Yoo’s
Koreannerinnen in Deutschland (Korean women in Germany, 1981),
which investigates the manner in which clothing styles marked a cultural
shift among this group, to various monographs by professors and private
scholars, researchers have paid ample attention to this theme. For exam-
ple, the 1985 work Im Schatten des Lebens (In life’s shadow) explores
the condition of Korean miners in North Rhine-Westphalia. Yang-Cun
Jeong’s monograph (2008) traces the emergence of Korean-Protestant
immigrant communities since 1963.46 In a number of cases, the success
(or plight) of Korean guest workers in Germany has been the focus. Jae-
Hyeon Choe and Hansjürgen Daheim’s 1987 volume covers one of the
major questions concerning Korean guest workers in Germany, whether
they should stay in Germany and become German citizens or return to
Korea.47 Jang-Seop Lee’s Koreanischer Alltag in Deutschland (Everyday
life of Koreans in Germany, 1991) analyzes various Koreans’ efforts to
acculturate to the German way of life.48 Hyeon-Mi Hwang’s 1999 book
reminds us that a large part of the attempt to integrate takes place when
learning the German language. Many Korean families in Germany have
made a consistent effort to maintain the old language and culture while
living in the new.49 Several monographs in the 1980s and 1990s demon-
strated that identity issues cut across numerous fields, from sociology to
education and religion, for example.50
Scholars of German language and literature or broader cultural stud-
ies will be interested also in the work that has been done on German-
Korean linguistic, literary, and translation-oriented topics. Dorothea
Koch’s Germanistikstudium in Südkorea (Germanistik in South Korea,
1996) set a more general discipline-based tone, but there are various
works that compare German and Korean culture and specific literary
developments, too.51 Gyu-Chang Kim’s 2001 book, which examines
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Korean renderings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a case in point.52

Similarly, Hans-Alexander Kneider, Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer, and Hee-
Seok Park offer an overview of the work of three renowned Korean fig-
ures in Franz Eckert—Mirok Li—Yun Isang.53 It is worth noting that the
composer Yun Isang has become the most well-known Korean-German,
and there have been several studies on him.54
Although not easy to find outside of Korea, there are also many
Korean-language texts on the topic, and several are worth mentioning
here. Among early works, one that significantly contributed to a German
wave in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s is a collection of essays
by the female writer and translator of German literature Cheon Hye-Rin
(1934–1965), entitled Kŭrigo amu mal do haji annatta (And no one
spoke any more, 1966). With a touch that is at once both Nietzschean
and perhaps also slightly nostalgic, this author described her study of
German literature in Munich and her work in German literature after
her return to Korea.55 One can sense the extensive range of literary
encounters between Germany and Korea since the 1980s in the biblio-
graphical section (Korean-German comparative literary study-related
resources) of Sang-bǒm Chin’s Han-dok munhak ŭi bigyo munhakchǒk
yǒngu (Comparative research of Korean literature and German litera-
ture). Some examples of comparative study of German and Korean writ-
ers include Max Frisch and Choi In-Hun, Hermann Hesse and Kim
Man-Jung, Volker Ludwig and Kim Min-Gil, Christa Wolf and Choi
In-Hoon, Ingeborg Bachmann and Chun Hye-Rin, R.M. Rilke and
Hann Youn-Un, Hermann Hesse and Yi Sang, Franz Kafka and Choe
Sun-Cheol, Franz Kafka and Lee Chung-Jun, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe and Lee Kwang-Soo, Thomas Mann and Yeom Sang-Seop, to
name just a few examples. In addition, there are several reception studies
of German authors (Schiller, Kafka, etc.) in Korea.56
In terms of non-literary works since 2000, the following publications
serve as a representative sample. On the theme of war, we find Hyǒng-
Sik Choi’s Dog’il ŭi jaemujang kwa han’guk jǒn’jaeng (Germany’s rear-
mament and the Korean War, 2002).57 Yǒng-gwan Yi’s Han’guk kwa
dog’il (Korea and Germany, 2002), offers an overview of Korean-German
affairs. By Sang-Rok Lee, You-Jae Lee, Alf Lüdtke, et al., the book
Ilsang’sa ro bonŭn han’guk kŭn’hyǒndaesa (Modern Korean history seen
from the perspective of everyday life, 2006) draws comparisons between
the two countries on the basis of the mundane life of ordinary people.58
The theme of gendered migration has been examined in Dog’il iju yǒsǒng
10 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

ŭi salm (The lives of migrant Korean women in Germany, 2014).59 Like

the various more general works above, but with a focus on Germany,
Hans-Alexander Kneider’s Korean-language work Dogil-ŭi baljachwi-reul
ttara (Following German traces, 2014) provides another overview of the
developing relationship between Germany and Korea.60 Most recently,
Jin-Sung Chun’s Sangsang ŭi Athene, Berŭlin-Tokyo-Seoul (Imagined
Athens, Berlin-Tokyo-Seoul, 2015) appeared, showing links between
building styles and interpretations of cultural history in East and West.61
Finally, Chun-Sik Kim’s edited volume Han’guk kwa dog’il, Tong’il yǒksa
kyo’yuk ŭl malhada (Korea and Germany talk about history education for
reunification, 2016) takes up again that seeming favorite of topics seen
above among German-language publications, the political divide.62
Among English-language publications, to which this volume will add
its own distinct contribution, there are works on some of the topics cov-
ered above, albeit not to the degree one can find in German and Korean.
There are several books that emphasize “lessons” of German reunifica-
tion for a possible future Korean unification. John J. Metzler’s Divided
Dynamism deals with reunification of three countries—Germany, Korea,
and China.63 More specifically, Myŏng-gyu Kang and Helmut Wagner’s
Germany and Korea (1995) and Ulrich Albrecht’s edited volume The
Political and Socio-economic Challenge of Korean unification (1997)
point out aspects of German reunification that Koreans might bear in
mind for their own potential reunification.64 On the topic of espionage,
Jeffrey T. Richelson’s Spying on the Bomb (2006) covers links between
Nazi Germany, Iran, and North Korea.65 Mee-Kyung Jung’s Essays on
Labor Market and Human Capital—Korea and Germany (2011) seeks
answers to Korea’s unemployment problems in German job-training
practices.66
Other works go beyond the rather narrow set of foci on reunification
and labor. Yur-Bok Lee’s West Goes East (1988), for instance, analyzes in
detail the diplomatic work of Paul Georg von Möllendorff in Korea in
the late nineteenth century.67 He tried to reorient Korean foreign policy
toward cooperation with Russia, thus irking other powers. Suin Roberts’
Language of Migration (2012) details the struggles and successes of
Korean guest workers in Germany.68 A book chapter by Hoi-eun Kim,
“Measuring Asian-ness: Erwin Baelz’s Anthropological Expeditions in
Fin-de-Siècle Korea,” analyzes Baelz’s work in Korea and how it pro-
vided the ideological legitimacy for Japan’s annexation of Korea.69 Two
recent volumes by Eun-Jeung Lee and Hannes B. Mosler, Civil Society
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

on the Move (2015) and Lost and Found in “Translation” (2015), analyze
questions of civil society and the student movement, on the one hand,
and the process and impact of translating policies and laws across cul-
tures, on the other.70 Finally, one can find that during the last ten years
at least four dissertations were completed in English on the German-
Korean composer Isang Yun, all of which explore Western and Asian ele-
ments in his music.71
While this list is not comprehensive, it offers a general overview of the
issues and debates among scholars of Korean-German affairs in Germany,
South Korea, and North America. Given that the present book covers
many of the topics mentioned above, but gathered together in one vol-
ume, it is rather unusual, especially among English-language publica-
tions. The editors hope that it gives rise to both new discoveries and also
reinvigorates debate on older, more widely known issues.

Organization of This Volume

Divided into four parts, the chapters in Transnational Encounters
between Germany and Korea present German-Korean relations as increas-
ingly comparable, despite their otherwise obvious differences of cultural
and historical experience. Part I. “An Overview” sets the tone for the
rest of the book. Especially for readers with little background knowledge
of Germany and Korea, this section offers a window onto the shared
past of these two countries and peoples. In the single chapter in this sec-
tion, entitled “130 Years of German-Korean Relations,” Eun-Jeung Lee
and Hannes B. Mosler present an overview of more than a century of
German-Korean affairs. In the years prior to 1945, this chapter grants a
view of Germans in Korea and Koreans in Germany. It then probes the
nature of relations between the former German Democratic Republic
and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as well as between the
former Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Korea. For the
post-unification period, it focuses on Germany’s various exchanges with
South Korea, especially those of an economic and academic nature. The
reader will come to see that, at least in part, the strong trade that takes
place between these two nations today arises out an often positive, long-
standing relationship.
Part II. “German-Korean Relations before 1945” includes several
chapters from the earliest period of interactions between the German-
speaking world and Korea. In “Paul Georg von Möllendorff: A German
12 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

Reformer in Korea,” Eun-Jeung Lee presents the efforts of this German

linguist and diplomat, the first foreigner employed by the Korean gov-
ernment as an advisor (1882–1885). Möllendorff (1847–1901) was
appointed vice-foreign minister of Korea by King Gojong himself and
went on to leave a strongly positive impression of Germany on Koreans
that has remained, to some extent, to the present day. This chapter offers
a view of Möllendorff not typically known outside of Korea by show-
casing his merits as a reformer. Negative evaluations of him in German
archives are due largely to resentment other foreign diplomats felt
toward him. From a Korean perspective, however, Möllendorff deserves
recognition for his work much like that accorded to the German physi-
cian Philipp Franz von Siebold in late-Edo-period Japan.
In “Franz Eckert and Richard Wunsch: Two Prussians in Korean
Service,” Hans-Alexander Kneider seeks to acquaint the reader with
other influential Germans in Korea. He depicts two Prussians who
served Emperor Gojong. Bandmaster Franz Eckert introduced German
military brass band music to both Japan and also Korea and then com-
posed the national anthems of both countries. Similarly important for
early German-Korean relations, the second figure featured in this chap-
ter is Dr. Richard Wunsch, personal physician of the Korean emperor.
During the years of annexation into the Japanese empire, Korea received
ever greater influence from German culture, albeit indirectly, in ways
that affected the shape of the Korean capital of Seoul. In “Specters of
Schinkel in East Asia: Berlin, Tokyo, and Seoul from a Viewpoint of
Modernity/Coloniality,” Jin-Sung Chun examines the three modern
capital cities Berlin, Tokyo and Seoul to show how a dominant cul-
tural heritage was transferred to heterogeneous cultural environments
in the colonial periphery, autonomously appropriated by the colonized,
and eventually transformed into a postcolonial “lieu de mémoire.” To
offer a view of the interconnectedness of these three cities, Chun dis-
cusses Prussian classicism as a cardinal legacy of German national culture,
the Japanese appropriation of Prussian classicism, and then finally the
German-Japanese cultural legacy in Seoul before and after the national
liberation.
The chapters in Part III “A Common Fate in the Cold War Era and
Beyond” show moments of convergence between the German and
Korean experience in the latter half of the twentieth century, a period
when these two nations were recreated in accordance with postwar ideo-
logical differences between the former allies the United States and the
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

Soviet Union. During this period, Koreans had to imagine Germany in

terms of West and East, and Germans had understandably divided views
of Koreans, since they had to reinterpret them as both North and also
South Koreans. In “Korean-German Relations from the 1950s to the
1980s: Archive-based Approach to Cold War-Era History,” Sang-Hwan
Seong explores transnational relations within the two Cold War blocs
(South Korea-West Germany and North Korea-East Germany) in the
1950s and 1960s. Focusing on the East Berlin Espionage Affair in the
late 1960s, Seong shows both friendly and also troubled postwar politi-
cal and diplomatic relations between South Korea and West Germany.
Relations between the former East Germany and North Korea started
out quite amicable in the 1950s. Indeed, the GDR provided substan-
tial assistance to North Korea, but between the years 1958 and 1960
Kim Il-Sung began to limit cooperation with East Germany and other
­socialist states.
In “Luise Rinser’s Third-World Politics: Isang Yun and North Korea,”
Joanne Miyang Cho treats Luise Rinser’s role as an apologist for North
Korea. Rinser showed enthusiasm for North Korea’s Juche ideology and
praised it for its encouragement of economic and political independence
and rejection of American and Soviet imperialism. On these points, the
chapter presents also Isang Yun’s experience in the East Berlin Incident
and connection to North Korea and his influence on Rinser. Ultimately,
Rinser’s understanding of Juche ideology proved limited, for she failed
to observe its link to North Korea’s economic downturn and interna-
tional isolation. In “Liminal Visions: Cinematic Representations of the
German and Korean Divides,” Bruce Williams explores the depiction of
inner-national borders in films dealing with the division of Germany and
Korea. The four films analyzed—Margarethe von Trotta’s The Promise
(1995), Park Chang-wook’s JSA (2000), Kim Tae-kyun’s Crossing
(2008), and Christian Petzold’s Barbara (2012)—reveal the ideologi-
cal issues at stake in capitalist representations of the communist “other.”
The films focus on both direct and also indirect border crosses, and the
border spaces they depict range from highly historicized to fantastic
and implausible. In each case, as Williams shows, the trope of the inner-
national border underscores the film’s propagandistic nature.
In Aaron D. Horton’s “The ‘Ignorant’ Other: Popular Stereotypes of
North Koreans in South Korea and East Germans in Unified Germany,”
we find a comparison of the ways that North Korean refugees in
South Korea and East Germans after reunification have been regarded
14 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

as ignorant, inferior people by their capitalist “cousins.” In two of the

world’s most prosperous nations, North Korean refugees and East
Germans have struggled to find employment and opportunity, a chal-
lenge exacerbated by negative stereotypes. They have been subjected to
popular images depicting them as simple “rubes” incapable of adjust-
ing to the hustle and bustle of modern society. Despite significant dif-
ferences, Horton demonstrates, the North Korean refugees in South
Korea and East Germans in unified Germany share numerous com-
monalities of experience. Then, in “Illusions of Unity: Life Narratives
in Eastern German and North Korean Unification Literature,” Birgit
Susanne Geipel compares the novels Unter dem Namen Norma (1994)
by Brigitte Burmeister with Mannam (2001) by Kim Nam-ho. While the
unification ideology of ethnic nationalism appears in the North Korean
context, it has been viewed critically from an Eastern German post-unifi-
cation perspective. This chapter reveals the contrast between the popular
discontent with the post-unification situation in Germany and ideologi-
cally conformist pro-unification writings in North Korea. Kinship nar-
ratives constructed by unification ideology have generated an illusion of
homogeneity impossible after decades of division.
Part IV. “The Migration of Ideas and People” presents ways in which
Germany and Korea have connected via the movement of both abstract
things (i.e., thoughts, interpretations of the past, artistic expression)
and so very concrete human beings (i.e., guest workers, immigrants)
from one country to the other. In “Depictions of the Self as Korean in
German-language Literature by Mirok Li and Kang Moon Suk,” by Lee
M. Roberts, the reader meets two Korean writers of German-language
literature. Mirok Li (1899–1950) fled Korea in 1919 after participating
in a peaceful protest against Japan’s annexation of his country, landed in
Germany, and wrote of his hardships. Kang Moon Suk (1965–) went to
Germany as a singer and added to her repertoire erotic poetry suggestive
of her background in both Korea and also Germany. Seldom recognized
for their ethnic particularity, these two writers have created a literary pic-
ture of themselves as Koreans for the German-reading public that implies
ways they have adapted to and coped with German culture.
While Roberts’ chapter may offer a view of the self as depicted in the
works of two Koreans in Germany, it has been difficult over the twentieth
century to gain a single, unified impression of either Germany or Korea,
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

because both nations have represented a mélange of ideological extremes.

Within various German-language writings by people of Korean back-
ground, however, we find some commonalities on what it has meant to be
either Korean or from Korea while also living in Germany. Suin Roberts’
“Endstation der Sehnsüchte: Home-Making of Return Gastarbeiter
Migrants” tells something of a continuation of the story of roughly
10,000 Korean nurses and 6000 miners who worked in former West
Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Forty years later, some return “home”
to the newly founded German Village (Dokil Mauel), where all houses had
to be built to look “German.” This chapter analyzes Cho Sung-Hyung’s
documentary Endstation der Sehnsüchte (Final Station of Yearnings, 2009)
and newspaper articles on Dokil Mauel to show how the inhabitants are
portrayed and portray themselves, including characteristics perceived as
national (i.e., specifically German or Korean) and representations of their
(acquired) German heritage and culture in their homes.
In Ho-keun Choi’s “History as a Mirror: Korea’s Appropriation of
Germany’s Experience in Rectifying the Past,” the reader gains insight
into how Germany’s experience with facing its past has been appropri-
ated and applied in Korean society. While Koreans have been ambivalent
about their own culpability as perpetrators of historical civilian massacres,
social and political interest has focused on the colonial experience. Thus,
Koreans’ attempts to rectify their past have not given rise to reflection
on their own past mistakes, but rather highlighted Japan‘s responsibility
for its colonial atrocities. Koreans’ use of the German experience has not
been grounded in honest confrontation with the past, as championed
by Theodor W. Adorno, but more on selective memory and nationalist
sentiment. Finally, Kyung Lee Gagum’s “Goethe’s Faust in the South
Korean Manhwa The Tarot Café: Sang-Sun Park’s Critical Project”
examines how in Sang-Sun Park’s graphic novel series The Tarot Café
(2007), pop culture merges with canonical German literature. Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust blends with vernacular social forms to cre-
ate a South Korean version of the German legend. Although Park’s work
appears to be a culturally neutral pictorial narrative, it actually decon-
structs conventional gender roles of female and male in South Korean
society in the 2000s. Gagum illuminates this nuanced representation of a
female Faust to offer insights into Korean-based recontextualizations and
interpretations of Faust today.
16 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

Conclusion
Koreans and Germans might once have wondered where their respec-
tive countries lie and what people on the other side of the world eat and
do on a daily basis, but roughly 130 years have passed since the estab-
lishment of a formal relationship between these two nations. While
the cultural and informational flow may have often been from West to
East, things have not been entirely unidirectional. Indeed, exchange has
flowed from East to West, too, and with this point in mind this v­ olume
has endeavored to present a view of both Germans’ perceptions of Korea
and Koreans’ perceptions of Germany. For the many curious out there,
those willing to go abroad to work or study, the other country has
perhaps never been so far away, even if information about it may have
sometimes been hard to come by. This volume attempts to make such
information easier to access.
As stated briefly above, Transnational Encounters between Germany
and Korea is something of a unique work in the English-speaking world,
not to mention in German Studies in North America today. While there
are many other publications on German-Korean relations, none perhaps
has brought together chapters on as wide a range of topics. From the
general overview of connections between people of the two nations since
the late nineteenth century to more specific, special interests, like litera-
ture and pop culture, the chapters gathered here represent an attempt to
offer a view of German Studies as the field relates to Korea(s) past and
present. In so doing, the editors of this volume strive to continue a trend
that seeks to highlight the growing international breadth of today’s
German Studies pursued by students and scholars everywhere.

Notes
1. 
Joanne Miyang Cho and David Crowe, eds., Germany and China:
Transnational Encounters since the Eighteenth Century (New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2014); Joanne Miyang Cho, Lee M. Roberts, and
Christian W. Spang, eds., Transnational Encounters between Germany
and Japan: Perceptions of Partnership in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016); Joanne Miyang Cho
and Douglas T. McGetchin, eds., Gendered Encounters between Germany
and Asia: Transnational Perspectives since 1800 (New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2017).
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

2. Christian Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich, eds., Japanese-German

Relations, 1895–1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion (New
York: Routledge, 2006); Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock, eds.,
Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia (New York:
Berghahn, 2014); Veronika Fuechtner and Mary Rhiel, Imagining
Germany Imaging Asia: Essays in Asian-German Studies (Rochester, NY:
Camden House, 2013).
3. Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion,
Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and
German Historical Institute, 2009).
4. Ann-Christina L. Knudsen and Karen Gram-Skjoldager, “Historiography and
narration in transnational history,” Journal of Global History (2014): 144;
Sebastian Conrad and Andreas Eckert, “Globalgeschichte, Globalisierung,
multiple Modernen: Zur Geschichtsschreibung der modernen Welt,” in
Globalgeschichte: Theorien, Ansätze, Themen, ed. Sebastian Conrad, Andreas
Eckert, Ulrike Freitag (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2008), 17.
5. Conrad and Eckert, “Globalgeschichte, Globalisierung, multiple
Modernen,” 22.
6. Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2016), 1−2.
7. Pierre-Yves Saunier and Akira Iriye, eds., The Palgrave Dictionary of
Transnational History (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2009).
8. Knudsen and Gram-Skjoldager, “Historiography and narration in transna-
tional history,” 143−144.
9. Ibid., 144, 146.
10. Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and
Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Pierre-Yves Saunier,
Transnational History: Theory and History (Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
11. Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “World History in a Global Age,”
American Historical Review, 100, no. 4 (Oct. 1995): 1034−1060;
Charles Bright and Michael Geyer, “Globalgeschichte und die Einheit der
Welt im 20. Jahrhundert, in Globalgeschichte: Theorien, Ansätze, Themen,
ed. Sebastian Conrad, Andreas Eckert, and Ulrike Freitag (Frankfurt am
Main: Campus, 2008); Jerry Bentley, ed., The Oxford Handbook of World
History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Pamela Kyle Crossley,
What is Global History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008); Patrick
Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Arif Dirlik, Global Modernity:
Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press,
18 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

2007); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought

and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
12. Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and
Approaches in a Connected World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011); Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Peterson, Geschichte
der Globaliserung. Dimensionen, Prozesse, Epochen (Munich: C.H. Beck,
2007); Conrad, Eckert and Freitag, eds., Globalgeschichte; Sebastian
Conrad, Globalgeschichte. Eine Einführung (Munich: Beck, 2013); _____,
What is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
13. Margrit Pernau, Transnationale Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2011); Madeleine Herren, Martin Rüesch, and Christiane
Sibille, Transcultural History: Theories, Methods, Sources (Heidelberg:
Springer, 2012).
14. Akira Iriye and Jürgen Osterhammel are series co-editors of the six-vol-
ume work, A History of the World History. It is a joint publication of
Harvard University Press and C.H. Beck.
15. Conrad, Globalgeschichte, 17.
16. Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History, 19.
17. Herren, Rüesch, and Sibille, Transcultural History.
18. Saunier, Transnational History, 8.
19. Iriye, Global and Transnational History.
20. “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” The American
Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1441−1464.
21. Geyer and Bright, “World History in a Global Age”; Bright and Geyer,
“Globalgeschichte und die Einheit der Welt im 20. Jahrhundert”;
Crossley, What is Global History?; Manning, Navigating World History;
Dirlik, Global Modernity.
22. Conrad, Globalgeschichte, 17.
23. Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 15.
24. “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” 1448.
25. Sebastian Conrad, “Double Marginalization: A Plea for a Transnational
Perspective,” in Comparative and Transnational History: Central
European Approaches and New Perspectives, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
and Jürgen Kocka (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 61−63; Jürgen
Osterhammel, “A ‘Transnational’ History of Society: Continuity or
New Departure?” in Comparative and Transnational History. Central
European Approaches and New Perspectives, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
and Jürgen Kocka (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 49.
26. Andreas Eckert, “Germany and Africa in the Late Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries. An Entangled History?” in Comparative
and Transnational History. Central European Approaches and New
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

Perspectives, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (New York:

Berghahn Books, 2009), 227.
27. Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
28. Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 14.
29. Ibid., 4.
30. Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the
German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2010), 1, 3.
31. Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 4−6.
32. Monica Juneja and Margrit Pernau, “Lost in Translation? Transcending
Boundaries,” in Haupt and Kocka, Comparative History and
Transnational History. Central European Approaches and New
Perspectives, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2009), 107, 110.
33. Saunier, Transnational History, 5.
34. Ibid., 8.
35. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, “Introduction,” in
Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches
and New Perspectives, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (New
York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 2, 19.
36. Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria, “Einleitung: Geteilte
Geschichten—Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt,” in Jenseits des
Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspectiven in den Geschichts- und
Kulturwissenschaften, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main and New York:
Campus, 2013), 39−40.
37. Herren, Rüesch, and Sibille, Transcultural History, 5−6.
38. Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History
of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2014).
39. Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 4, 11.
40. Shalini Randeria, “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities,” in
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, Comparative History and
Transnational History Central European Approaches and New Perspectives,
ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (New York: Berghahn
Books, 2009), 80.
41. Conrad and Randeria, “Einleitung,” 39.
42. Volker Grabowsky, Zwei-Nationen-Lehre oder Wiedervereiniging?:
Die Einstellung der Partei der Arbeit Koreas und der Sozialistischen
Einheitspartei Deutschlands zur nationalen Frage ihrer Länder seit dem
Zweiten Weltkrieg: ein Vergleich (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1987).
20 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

43. Won-myoung Lee, Zur Frage der Nation und der Wiedervereinigung

im geteilten Korea: ein koreanischer Weg oder die Anwendung der
Deutschland-Formel als Modus vivendi? (Seoul: Research Center for Peace
and Unification of Korea, 1989).
44. Hartmut Koschyk, ed., Deutschland, Korea. Geteilt, vereint (Munich:
Olzog, 2005); Klaus Stüwe and Eveline Hermannsede, eds., Die
Wiedervereinigung geteilter Nationen: Erfahrungen aus Deutschland und
Perspektiven für Korea (Berlin: LIT, 2011).
45. Hans-Alexander Kneider, Globetrotter, Abenteurer, Goldgräber: Auf den
Spuren im alten Korea: mit einem Abriss zur Geschichte der Yi-Dynastie
und der deutsch-koreanischen Beziehungen bis 1910 (Munich: Iudicium,
2009); Jong-soo Han, Die Beziehungen zwischen der Republik Korea und
der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1948-1986 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 1992); Eun-Jeung Lee and Hannes B. Mosler, Facetten deutsch-
koreanischer Beziehungen: 130 Jahre gemeinsame Geschichte (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2017).
46. Tai-Soon Yoo, Koreannerinnen in Deutschland: Eine Analyse zum
Akkulturationsverhalten am Beispiel der Kleidung (PhD diss, Westfälische
Wilhelms-Unversität Münster, 1981); C. Nestler-Tremel, U. Tremel, and
W. Lienemann, Im Schatten des Lebens: Südkoreaner Im Steinkohlebergbau
von Nordrheinwestfalen. Eine Untersuchung zur Rotationspolitik mit aus-
ländischen Arbeitnehmern (Heidelberg: Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen
Studiengemeinschaft, 1985); Jung-Sook Yu, Koreanische Immigranten in
Deutschland: Interessenvertretung und Selbstorganisation (Hamburg: Kovač,
1996); Yang-Cun Jeong, Koreanische Immigrationsgemeinden in der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland: die Entstehung, Entwicklung und Zukunft der
koreanischen protestantischen Immigrationsgemeinden in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland seit 1963 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008).
47. Jae-Hyeon Choe and Hansjürgen Daheim, Rückkehr und Bleibeperspektiven
koreanischer Arbeitsmigranten in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1987).
48. Jang-Seop Lee, Koreanischer Alltag in Deutschland: Zur Akkulturation
der koreanischen Familien (Münster: F. Coppenrath, 1991); Klaus Stüwe
and Eveline Hermannseder, eds., Migration und Integration als trans-
nationale Herausforderung. Perspektiven aus Deutschland und Korea
(Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016).
49. Hyeon-Mi Hwang, Identitätsentwicklung und Zweisprachigkeit im
interkulturellen Umfeld am Beispiel koreanischer Kinder der zweiten
Generation aus Arbeiterfamilien in Deutschland (Berlin: Logos, 1999).
50. Young-Hee Kim, Sozialisationsprobleme koreanischer Kinder in der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1986);
Ko-Hoon Park Erziehung und Leben koreanischer Kinder in Deutschland.
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

Eine empirische Untersuchung (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996);

Byong Ro-An, Die Religiosität der Koreaner in Deutschland (Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 1997).
51. Dorothea Koch, Germanistikstudium in Südkorea (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1996); Ze U. Yang, Strukturen und Elemente koreanis-
cher Volkserzählungen: in Hinblick auf die Volksreligionenen in Korea
und im Vergleich mit den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1980).
52. Gyu Chang Kim, Vermittlungs- und Übersetzungsgeschichte Goethes
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001).
53. Martin H. Schmidt, ed., Franz Eckert - Mirok Li - Yun Isang (Oberursel/
Ts.: Regardeur III, 2008).
54. http://yun-gesellschaft.de/e/index.htm. Accessed on February 11, 2017.
55. Hye-Rin Cheon, Kŭrigo amu mal do haji annatta [And no one spoke any
more] (1966; Seoul: Minseochulpan, 2013).
56. Sang-bǒm Chin, Han-dok munhak ŭi bigyo munhakchǒk yǒngu (Seoul:
Bagichǒn, 2012). 403−410. https://play.google.com/books/reader?p
rintsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=rvbkAwAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.
PA193. Note to readers: This volume contains transliterations from
Korean according to two styles, both the McCune-Reischauer and also
the more current Revised Romanization of Korean systems, depending
on the scholar’s preference in the given chapter.
57. Hyǒng-Sik Choi, Dog’il ŭi jaemujang kwa han’guk jǒn’jaeng [Germany’s
rearmament and the Korean war] (Seoul: Hye’an, 2002)
58. Sang-Rok Lee, You-Jae Lee, Alf Lüdtke, et al., Ilsang’sa ro bonŭn han’guk
kŭn’hyǒndaesa: Han’guk kwa dog’il ilsangsa ŭi saero’un man’nam
[Modern Korean history seen from everyday life: A new encounter
between Korean and German Alltagsgeschichte] (Seoul: Chaek kwa
Ham’gge, 2006).
59. Jaedog Han’guk Yǒsǒng Mo’im [Korean Women’s Association in
Germany], Dog’il iju yǒsǒng ŭi salm: Gŭ hyǒndaesa ŭi girok [The Lives of
the Migrated Korean Women in Germany: A Record of Contemporary
History] (Seoul: Dangdae, 2014).
60. Hans-Alexander Kneider, Dogil-ŭi baljachwi-reul ttara. Han-dok gwangye:
chochanggi-puteo1910 nyeon-kkaji [Following German traces: Korean-
German relations, from their beginnings to 1910] (Seoul: Ilchogak, 2014)
61. Jin-Sung Chun, Sangsang ŭi Athene, Berŭlin-Tokyo-Seoul: Gi’ǒk kwa
gǒnchuk i bijǒnen Bulhyǒp’hwa’ŭm ŭi Munhwasa [Imagined Athens,
Berlin-Tokyo-Seoul: Cultural history of the discord between memory and
architecture] (Seoul: Chǒn’nyǒn ŭi sangsang, 2015).
62. Chun-Sik Kim, ed., Han’guk kwa dog’il, Tong’il yǒksa kyo’yuk ŭl malhada
[Korea and Germany talk about history education for reunification]
(Seoul: Nutisup, 2016).
22 J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts

63. John J. Metzler, Divided Dynamism: the diplomacy of separated nations:

Germany, Korea, China, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 2014).
64. Myŏng-gyu Kang and Helmut Wagner, Germany and Korea: Lessons in
Unification (Seoul: Seoul National University, 1995); Ulrich Albrecht,
ed., The Political and Socio-economic Challenge of Korean Unification:
Lessons from Germany’s Post-unification Experience (Berlin: Institut für
Internat. Politik und Regionsstudien, 1997).
65. Jeffrey T. Richelson, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence
from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (New York: W.W. Norton,
2007).
66. Mee-Kyung Jung, Essays on Labor Market and Human Capital - Korea
and Germany (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011).
67. Yur-Bok Lee, West Goes East: Paul Georg von Möllendorff and great power
Imperialism in late Yi Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1988).
68. Suin Roberts, Language of Migration: Self- and Other-representation of
Korean Migrants n Germany (New York: Peter Lang, 2012).
69. Hoi-eun Kim, “Measuring Asian-ness: Erwin Baelz’s Anthropological
Expeditions in Fin-de-Siècle Korea,” in Imagining Germany, Imagining
Asia, ed. Veronika Feuchtner and Mary Rhiel (Rochester: Camden
House, 2013), 7.
70. Eun-Jeung Lee and Hannes B. Mosler, eds., Civil Society on the Move:
Transition and Transfer in Germany and South Korea (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2015); _____, Lost and Found in “Translation”:
Circulating Ideas of Policy and Legal Decision Processes in Korea and
Germany (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015).
71. S. Choy, “The Fusion of Korean and Western Elements in Isang Yun’s
Konzert für Flöte und kleines Orchester” (PhD diss., University of
Georgia, 2010); Ko-Eun Lee, “Isang Yun’s Musical Bilingualism: Serial
Technique and Korean Elements in Fünf Stücke für Klavier (1958) and
His Later Piano Works” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, 2012); Dae-Sik Hur, “A Combination of Asian Language
with Foundations of Western Music: An Analysis of Isang Yun’s Salomo
for Flute Solo or Alto Flute Solo” (PhD diss., University of North Texas,
2005); Jee-Yeoun Ko, “Isang Yun and His Selected Cello Works” (PhD
diss., Louisiana State University, 2008).
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

Authors’ Biography
Joanne Miyang Cho is Professor and Chair of History at William Paterson
University, New Jersey. She is co-editor of Transcultural Encounters between
Germany and India (2014), Germany and China (2014), Transnational
Encounters between Germany and Japan (2016), and Gendered Encounters
between Germany and Asia (2017). She is a co-editor of the Palgrave Series in
Asian German Studies.

Lee M. Roberts is Associate Professor of German at Indiana University-Purdue

University, Fort Wayne, and co-editor of the Palgrave Series in Asian German
Studies. He specializes in Asian-German Studies. His publications include
Literary Nationalism in German and Japanese Germanistik (2010) and chapters
in Germany and China (2014), Transnational Encounters between Germany and
Japan (2016), and Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia (2017).
 PART I

An Overview
 CHAPTER 2

130 Years of German-Korean Relations

Eun-Jeung Lee and Hannes B. Mosler

In the year 2013, Germany and Korea celebrated 130 years of formal
diplomatic relations first initiated by the signing of the German-Korean
Trade, Friendship, and Shipping Agreement on November 26, 1883.
While Germany and Korea may have thereafter occasionally loosened
their ties in light of their considerable geographic distance, the dramatic
trajectory of their respective national histories, and changing political
conditions on the world stage, they have never altogether abandoned
them and have recently even taken to expanding and strengthening
their relations with one another. As of the year 2000, Germany numbers
among the few states in the world to have set up diplomatic missions in
both Seoul and P’yŏngyang.
The first section of this chapter examines the historical background to
the establishment of diplomatic relations between Germany and Korea

E.-J. Lee (*)

Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin,
Fabeckstr, Berlin, Germany
H.B. Mosler
Graduate School of East Asian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin,
Hittorfstr, Berlin, Germany

© The Author(s) 2018 27

J.M. Cho and L.M. Roberts (eds.), Transnational Encounters between
Germany and Korea, Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95224-3_2
28 E.-J. Lee and H.B. Mosler

at the end of the nineteenth century, while the second and third sec-
tions are concerned with Germans living in Korea and Koreans living in
Germany prior to 1945. The fourth section is dedicated to the period
of German national division; more specifically to the manner in which
relations developed between the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on the one
hand, and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Republic of
Korea (ROK), on the other. Section five of this chapter covers the time
period following German national unification in 1990, with a focus on
German relations with South Korea, foremost among them those on an
economic level. The sixth and final section covers academic cooperation
and exchange.

The First German-Korean Encounter

and the Treaty of 1883

The first German-Korean encounter occurred in the mid-seventeenth

century, when Crown Prince Sohyŏn of Chosŏn met German mission-
ary Adam Schall von Bell SJ from Cologne. As a result of Chosŏn’s mili-
tary defeat at the hands of the budding Manchu dynasty, later known as
the Qing, the Crown Prince lived in China as a state hostage during the
years 1641–1645. He met and befriended Bell in Beijing in 1644 and
through him came to learn about Western science and technology. When
he finally returned to Korea in February 1645, Sohyŏn took with him a
number of books on the subject; although his friendship with Bell, the
first between a Korean and a German, had no immediate political effect
on account of Sohyŏn’s premature death soon after his return to Seoul,
the books he had brought back with him did manage to arouse the
curiosity of Korean scholars. This is how, in the second half of the sev-
enteenth century, Korean scholarship developed a new intellectual move-
ment known as sirhak, which emphasized an engagement with practical
knowledge—such as could be found in the newly emerging technologies
of the era and the natural sciences—in addition to the study and practice
of neo-Confucian orthodoxy.
Nearly two centuries would pass following this initial German-
Korean encounter in Beijing before the first German actually set foot
in Korea. That German was Karl F.A. Gützlaff, a missionary who spent
four weeks in Korea in 1832. While his trip to Korea went almost unno-
ticed, a visit by German merchant Ernst J. Oppert in the year 1866 left
 2 130 YEARS OF GERMAN-KOREAN RELATIONS 29

Koreans with a very strong impression, and a highly unfavorable one at

that. Oppert had come to Korea with the intention of convincing the
Chosŏn government to establish trade relations with Germany. When his
initial suggestion failed to meet with a positive response, he decided to
exert pressure on the most powerful man in Korea at the time, namely
Hŭngsŏn Taewŏn’gun, the king’s father. To this end, Oppert plotted
to plunder the grave of Hŭngsŏn Taewŏn’gun’s father, Prince Namyŏn.
Fully aware of the importance of filial piety in Korean society, Oppert
speculated that by gaining possession of Namyŏn’s corpse, he could
acquire the means to exert pressure on the Korean government. He failed
in this reckless endeavor, however, after being caught red-handed by a
group of individuals living near the burial site. This incident strengthened
Korean skepticism towards and outright dislike for Western foreigners
and prompted Taewŏn’gun to intensify his politics of isolation at a time
when both China and Japan had already established a wide range of con-
tacts with European countries and the United States of America.
In 1876, several years prior to signing its agreement with Germany,
Korea found itself forced, at the hands of the Japanese, to open its bor-
ders. Previous attempts by Max von Brandt, who had visited Korea in
1872 while working at the German ministerial residence in Tokyo, to
convince Korea to conclude a German-Korean trade agreement had met
with no response from the Korean government. After Korea had been
forcibly opened to foreign interests, however, Germany was among the
first countries with which it concluded diplomatic treaties. It was Max
von Brandt, who had served as German envoy to China since 1875, who
began negotiations with Korea and signed a German-Korean treaty of
friendship and trade in June 1882. This treaty was not, however, initially
ratified by Germany, due to reservations concerning the issue of extrater-
ritoriality; it was only officially concluded on November 26, 1883, after
certain amendments had been made.
The treaty, officially titled the “Treaty of Trade, Friendship, and
Shipping between the German Empire and the Kingdom of Chosŏn,”
consists of fourteen provisions concerning matters of shipping and cus-
toms duties, as well as provisions for the granting of extraterritoriality
and the prohibition of black market transactions. Korea had recently
established a Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 1882, and the
German-Korean treaty was signed by the newly appointed Minister
of Foreign Affairs Min Yŏng-mok and Eduard Zappe, German Consul
General to Yokohama. Remarkably, Paul Georg von Möllendorff, a
30 E.-J. Lee and H.B. Mosler

German national, participated in the signing of the treaty in his capacity

as Korean First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Germans in Korea Prior to 1945

The conclusion of the German-Korean agreement of 1883 brought
to Korea many Germans who chose to get involved in various areas of
Korean public life. Paul Georg von Möllendorff in particular came to
play an important role in the early days of German-Korean relations.1
Möllendorff, who had become an adviser to the Korean Ministry of
Foreign Affairs as early as in December 1882, was promoted to the
rank of First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 1883. King
Kojong (Gojong) entrusted him with overhauling public institutions
and finances; in particular, he was responsible for reorganizing the army
and the legal system, but his professional jurisdiction also extended to
the fields of education, farming, crafts, manufacturing, commerce, and
transport. Möllendorff proceeded by tackling several of these mod-
ernization projects simultaneously. To realize his ambitious goals for
reform, Möllendorff brought foreign experts of various nationali-
ties into the country, among them many originating from Germany. In
1883, Möllendorff persuaded German geologist Carl Gottsche, who was
working for Tokyo University as a guest lecturer at the time, to come
to Korea to conduct geological studies. In the years 1884–1885, he
invited German-American Joseph Rosenbaum to Korea, commissioning
him to build a glass production company that would process sand from
the Han River. Similarly, August Maertens, another German national,
found himself invited to advance the practice of rearing silkworms, while
Louis Kniffler and Paul Helm were asked, respectively, to expand Korean
tobacco cultivation and to run a large agricultural estate in the German
traditional manner.2 Möllendorff also encouraged the German trad-
ing company Eduard Meyer & Co. to open a subsidiary in Chemulp’o
(today’s Inch’ŏn).
By the time Möllendorff left Korea in 1885, his activities and efforts
had laid the foundation for a visible and continuously growing German
influence in Korea. In 1896, the Korean government licensed Eduard
Meyer & Co. to engage in mining activities, while the year 1898 saw
the foundation of the Imperial German Language School in Seoul, with
Johann Bolljahn as its head teacher. Prince Henry of Prussia, brother to
German Emperor William II, paid a brief visit to Korea in that same year
 2 130 YEARS OF GERMAN-KOREAN RELATIONS 31

and met with King Kojong during another visit in the following year.
He was arguably the highest-ranking foreign visitor to Korea in the late
Chosŏn period. In February 1901, the German composer Franz Eckert
was invited to Korea to serve as court conductor. During this period,
he composed the first national anthem of Korea, officially renamed
Taehanjeguk in 1896, and conducted the anthem’s 1902 premiere on the
occasion of the King’s 50th birthday. Also employed at the Korean impe-
rial court were Richard Wunsch, as personal physician to the emperor,
and Antoinette Sontag, sister-in-law to the then Russian ambassador to
Korea, who was appointed major-domo of the imperial household in
1896 and later established herself as one of the best-known Seoul-based
intermediaries between Korea and Europe.
Together, these Germans prepared the grounds for the highly favora-
ble impression of Germany prevalent in late Chosŏn Korea. Evidence of
the latter may be found in a quote taken from the diary of Yun Ch’i-ho,
who traveled to Europe as a member of the Korean delegation attending
the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II. His entry for May 17, 1896, writ-
ten while in Berlin, reads: “Everything German seems to be substantial,
knives, forks, tables, chairs, toothpicks, and all.”3 Yun may have actually
seen very little of Germany en route to Russia, yet he apparently felt suf-
ficiently confident about his impressions to assert that “everything” in
Germany was “substantial.” Similar ideas persist in Korea to this day,
accounting for one of the most common Korean clichés about Germany.
The end of the nineteenth century saw increased Korean interest
in contemporary German scholarship, particularly in the field of legal
studies. Yu Kil-chun, who had been the first Korean to study at uni-
versities in Japan and the US in the 1880s, dedicated parts of his book
Sŏyugyŏnmun (Observations from my Journey to the West) to a dis-
cussion of the Prussian Constitution and Prussian scholarship. His
and other Korean scholars’ interest in German law and legal scholar-
ship can be traced back to the influence of Japanese legal scholarship,
which had adopted Jellinek’s general theory of the State, as expounded
in his book by the same title, rather than Montesquieu’s theory of the
separation of powers. The Pŏpkwanyangsŏngso (founded in 1895) and
Posŏngjŏnmunhakkyo (founded in 1905), two seats of legal training,
came to play a pivotal role in the Korean reception of German legal
scholarship.
After the Korean government was forced by Japan to relinquish
its sovereignty in matters of security and foreign policy in 1905, the
32 E.-J. Lee and H.B. Mosler

German mission to Korea was closed. Many German nationals, however,

continued to live and work in Korea, and the year 1909 saw the first-
time arrival of missionaries from the St. Ottilien Congregation of the
Order of Saint Benedict in Korea. Despite increasingly adverse condi-
tions, the latter chose to continue their missionary work, centered mainly
around the city of Wŏnsan in the northeastern part of Korea, through-
out the era of Japanese colonial rule. They remained in Korea until lib-
eration in 1945, when advancing Russian troops destroyed their convent
and many of their padres and sisters were murdered. Those who survived
either returned to Germany or participated in setting up a new convent
in Waegwan in southeastern Korea, which exists to this day.
In 1945, the German lawyer and political scientist Ernst Fraenkel
came to Seoul to work as an adviser to the United States Army
Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK). Fraenkel, who had
immigrated to the US in 1938 on account of his participation in
resistance activities against National Socialist rule, assisted in estab-
lishing the South Korean legal system. Not only was he an expert
on occupation law, but he had also received training in both the
German and the American legal systems. Fraenkel’s background in
German law was of vital importance, given the heavy influence of
German legal theory on both Korean legal culture and the Korean
legal system. His activities in Korea included research on the possibil-
ity of recreating an independent, unified Korean state.4 Fraenkel also
played a decisive role in organizing the elections of the South Korean
Constituent Assembly, as well as in drafting the South Korean elec-
toral law. He served as adviser to the Constituent Assembly on mat-
ters of constitutional law and lectured at Seoul National University on
constitutional and public international law. Following the founding of
the Republic of Korea, Fraenkel served as a staff member at the US
Embassy in Seoul. He also served as a senior official in the Seoul mis-
sion of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), the organi-
zation originally founded to carry out the Marshall Plan in Europe
that had subsequently also opened offices in China and Korea.5 With
the outbreak of the Korean War, Fraenkel left Korea for Tokyo, where
he continued to engage with questions concerning Korea until the
spring of 1951.6
 2 130 YEARS OF GERMAN-KOREAN RELATIONS 33

Koreans in Germany Prior to 1945

Several years passed following the signing of the German-Korean Trade,
Friendship, and Shipping Agreement before the Chosŏn government
sent its first diplomatic mission to Germany. In 1886, Eduard Meyer,
proprietor of the trading company bearing his name, was appointed
Korean Consul General in Hamburg. Cho Sin-hŭi was dispatched from
Korea in 1887 to serve as Korean envoy to Germany but was only mid-
way through his trip when he was recalled owing to objections lodged by
China. These, in turn, resulted from a Sino-Korean disagreement regard-
ing the proper interpretation of contemporary East Asian foreign rela-
tions, relations that had traditionally been based on the tributary system.
From the Chinese point of view, Korea was a Chinese colony, as reflected
in the terms of an 1882 treaty. As a colony, the Chinese government
argued, Korea had no right to appoint diplomatic missions abroad in the
manner of sovereign states. The Korean government, on the other hand,
insisted that Sino-Korean relations, although based on the tributary sys-
tem traditional to East Asia, had never been predicated on colonial dom-
ination and subordination and that at no point in history had the issue
of Korean sovereignty ever been seriously in dispute. This conflict was
finally resolved in 1895, when China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War
of 1894/1895 forced the Qing state to formally acknowledge Korean
sovereignty. In 1887, a good seven years prior to these developments,
Germany proved unwilling to risk its good relations with China over
the issue of Korean sovereignty. It was therefore only in 1901 that Min
Ch’ŏl-hun was dispatched to Germany to serve as the first Korean com-
missioner to Berlin.
While Japanese colonization caused a rupture in Korean-German
diplomatic relations, a number of Korean individuals continued to
make their way to Germany even during the colonial era. In 1908, Kim
Chung-se, who in 1923 was to become the first Korean ever to receive
a German doctoral degree, enrolled at the University of Berlin to read
philosophy. Li Mirok, a student of medicine who had participated in
the March First independence movement (samil undong) in 1919, fled
to Germany to escape prosecution by the Japanese in 1920. Li stud-
ied zoology, botany, and anthropology in Würzburg, Heidelberg, and
Munich, and obtained his doctoral degree in 1928. From 1931 onwards,
he was active mainly as a writer. Among his most important works is his
autobiographical novel, The Yalu River Flows, published in 1946.7
34 E.-J. Lee and H.B. Mosler

In the 1920s and 1930s, a considerable number of Korean students

were enrolled in German universities, not as “Korean,” but rather as
“Japanese citizens.”8 With their status as “Japanese citizens,” Koreans
were free to enter Germany without a visa. Koreans with sufficient means
to support themselves financially were thus free to take up studies at
German universities. Many of those who did come to Germany enrolled
in medicine, while others chose philosophy, law, or the natural sci-
ences. Among the Korean students in Germany at the time we find Ahn
Ho-sang, South Korea’s first Minister for Education, Kim Chun-yŏn,
South Korean Minister of Justice from 1950 to 1951, and Yi Kang-guk,
who embraced communism during his time in Germany and helped form
a Korean communist movement upon his return in 1935.
Many of these Korean students in Germany lived in Berlin.9 Some of
them founded an association of Korean students in Germany called the
Yudok koryŏ haguhoe, the first Korean group of its kind in Europe. In its
November 24, 1923 issue, the Berliner Volkszeitung made publicly and
internationally known the acts of violence committed against Koreans by
Japanese in the aftermath of the great earthquake in Tokyo of that same
year.10 By 1923 Berlin had already become a special place for Koreans,
and with Sonn Gi-Jung (Son Ki-jŏng)’s victory in the men’s mara-
thon event at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games it came to symbolize
the Korean yearning for national independence as well. After all, Sonn
Gi-Jung had been forced to register as a Japanese athlete. To this day, his
name is displayed in Japanese at the Berlin Olympic Stadium—reading
“Son Ki Tei.”

Two Pairs of Friends: FRG–ROK and GDR–DPRK

Relations, 1945–1990
For Korea, the end of the Second World War brought with it not only
national independence, but also partition. In that sense, it suffered the
same fate as Germany. The partitioned states of Germany and Korea
each pursued friendly relations with their respective ideological counter-
parts, the FRG with the ROK on the one hand, and the GDR with the
DPRK on the other. Both Korean states attributed special importance
to entertaining friendly relations with their respective German counter-
part, as evident, among other things, from the fact that diplomatic rela-
tions between the two pairs of Korean and German states were, in each
 2 130 YEARS OF GERMAN-KOREAN RELATIONS 35

case, initiated by the Korean side. According to Michael Lemke, the

Korean War—which, interestingly, was referred to as the “Korea Crisis”
in both the FRG and the GDR—left a deep and lasting impression on
German politics. In light of that war, he argues, the governments in
Bonn and East Berlin each reached a conclusion that remained in effect
right up until 1989, namely that “under no circumstances was the clash
of systems and the fight for national unity to involve the use of military
force.”11
Both pairs of German and Korean states entered into, and maintained,
diplomatic relations with their respective ideological counterparts within
the framework of the antagonistic Cold War mentality, as is evident,
among other things, from the manner in which they chose to engage in
academic exchanges. The ROK and the DPRK each sent large cohorts of
students to the FRG and GDR respectively. As early as in the 1950s and
1960s, Germany was second only to the US in terms of its popularity
among South Koreans eager to quench their thirst for a university educa-
tion abroad. In particular, there was a steady increase in the number of
South Korean lawyers choosing to study in West Germany from the late
1950s onwards, probably because they regarded German legal scholar-
ship to be at the very root of their own legal system. Because most of the
South Korean lawyers trained at West German universities later obtained
professorships upon their return to Korea, academic relations between
Germany and Korea in the field of law only deepened over the course of
subsequent decades.12
Whereas the GDR and the DPRK had established diplomatic relations
with one another in November 1949, only shortly after they had each
come into existence, it would take another six years for the FRG and the
ROK to sign the treaty establishing their diplomatic relationship in 1955.
That said, the Korean War effectively prevented the GDR and the DPRK
from opening diplomatic missions in each other’s territory after enter-
ing into diplomatic relations with one another, and it would take until
1954 for both parties to actually dispatch their respective ambassadors.
As for the diplomatic relationship between the FRG and the ROK, the
latter opened a consulate general in Remagen on October 1, 1954, while
the former opened a consulate general in Seoul on October 11, 1956.
On March 5, 1956, both the FRG and the ROK elevated their general
consulates to the level of diplomatic missions, and on August 1, 1958
these were, in turn, changed into embassies by a joint declaration of the
two countries. Since then, the FRG and the ROK have both worked
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Keveät kuulen askeleet. — Oi hiljaa —
En kuulo enää, kuulin, kerran vielä…
Mut nyt ne haihtui.
Tuleeko hän jällen?
Jos hän, kuin moni muukin outo ennen,
Tul' ainoan tän kerran vaan? Ah, ei!
Sanoipa hän, hän lupas', että tänään
Tuleepi hän. Mut kaste lankeaa,
Jo ilta joutuvi. Ei, eihän tänään,
Sit.' ei hän voi. Mut ehkä huomenna…
Kuink' on nyt yksinäistä tääll' — —
VIIDES KOHTAUS.

JOLANTHA. MARTHA. Sitte Kuningas RENÉ ja EBN

JAHIA. Viimeiseksi ALMERIK.

MARTHA (tulee huoneuksen takaa ja lähenee kiireesti

Jolanthan huomattuaan).

Laps' armas!
Mitäpä näen mä! Herällä… oot täällä!

JOLANTHA.

Oi Martha! vihdoinkin! Miss' oot sa ollut?

MARTHA.

Luon' niittulaisten. Mutta sanos, ken…

Ken on sun herättänyt?

JOLANTHA.

Omin päin mä heräsin.

MARTHA.

Kuink', omin päin?

JOLANTHA.

Niin, muust'
En tiedä. Mutta kuules, etpä tiedä
Sä mitään, tääll' on ollut vieraita —

MARTHA.

Kuin, vieraita? Nyt pilailet sa. Keitä?

JOLANTHA.

Kaks outoa, joit' en mä tuntenut,

Jotk' eivät ennen ole täällä olleet.
Ikävä oli, että olit poissa.

MARTHA.

Voi lapsi, puhu toki järjin! Vierait'?

Oi mistä… miten, tarkotan ma —

JOLANTHA.

Mistä
He olivat, sit' en mä kysynyt.
Sanonut oot, ett'ei saa kysymällä
Vieraita vaivata.
 MARTHA (toimentuen).

Mut, lapsi, keitä

No oli siis?

JOLANTHA.

Sit' en mä tiedä, mutta —

MARTHA.

Ja yksin olit sa?

JOLANTHA.

Ma sua huusin,
Mut et sä kuullut.

MARTHA (erikseen).

Jumalani, eihän
Lie kenkään vaan!..
(Ääneen.)
Mut kerroppas —

JOLANTHA.

Oi Martha,
Ei niiden vertaist' olo täällä yhtään
Viel' ollut, toisen niist' ei ainakaan.
Niin laita varmaan lie, ett' on hän jostain
Ihmeitten maasta, erilaisest' aivan,
Kuin meidän maamme. Sillä voimakas
Hän oli puheissaan, ja kuitenkin
Niin hellä, herttainen, kuin sinäkin.

(Kuningas René ja Ebn Jahia tulevat toisten huomaamatta sisään

sala-ovesta ja viipyvät kuuleskellen perällä.)

Mua tervehti hän runolla — oi Martha!

Juur' eriskummaisella runolla,
Mi kyyneleet toi silmihini, vaikka
Osaksi vaan ma tuota ymmärsin.

MARTHA.

Toimennu, armas!
(Erikseen:)
Mitä saan ma kuulla?
(Ääneen:)
Mut sano, mistä puhui hän sun kanssas.

JOLANTHA.

Monesta — monest' oudost' asiasta.

Hän monta tiesi seikkaa, joit' en kuullut
Ma ole milloinkaan. Hän sanoi — vaan
En tajunnut mä häntä — sanoi, että
Juur' monta kappaletta erottaapi
Etäältä silmän kautt'.

MARTHA (erikseen).

Oi Jumala!
JOLANTHA.

Tajuutko sinä hänen tarkotustaan?

MARTHA (huomaa äsken tulleet).

Kuningas tääll'! Oi taivas!

KUNINGAS (erikseen Ebn Jahialle).

Mitä kuulen!
Jo ilmotettu mulle on!
(Astuu esiin lääkärin kanssa.)
Mun lapsen'!

JOLANTHA (lankee hänen kaulaansa).

Isäni armas, joko oot sa tullut!

KUNINGAS

Opettajasi tuon ma, Ebn Jahian.

JOLANTHA.

Vai hänkin. Suo mun sua tervehtää!

(Ebn Jahia kurottaa hälle kättänsä.)

KUNINGAS (vie Marihan syrjäpuoleen, joll'aikaa Ebn Jahia

puhuttelee Jolanthaa ja tarkastaa salaa hänen silmiänsä).

Mi tapaus on tääll' —?
MARTHA.

Oi, sit' en tiedä.

Kun nukkui hän, me siihen luotimme,
Ett' ei hän ennen heräjä, kuin häntä
Herätetään, ja poijes lähdimme.
Sill'aikaa — sanoo hän, mut mahdollist'
Ei lie se — joku outo tääll' on käynyt.

KUNINGAS.

Varomatonta mua! Ebn Jahiaa

Kun seurasin, ov' auki unhottui.
— No, Martha, outo tuo?

MARTHA.

Sen verran kuin

Voin päättää, kun hän viel' on hämillään,
Se hänen sokeudestansa puhui.

KUNINGAS.

Vai siitä! Siis on Luojan tahto, kaikk'

Ett' eeltäpäin on hänen tietäminen.
No niin!
(Viittaa lääkäriä.)
Oi Ebn Jahia! kuulitko?

EBN JAHIA.
 Ma kuulin; sattumus on auttanut.
Ja eräs outo hänet herätti.
Ma tuolta pöydält' amuletin löysin.
— Tilansa himmeästi vaan hän tuntee.
Mun täytyy vaatia, ett' toki, niin
Kuin lupasitte, ilmotatte hälle —

KUNINGAS.

Niin oon jo aikonut.

(Lähestyy Jolanthaa, joka tällä aikaa on puhunut Marthan kanssa.)
Mun tyttären'!
Nyt huomaavasti korvas kallista!
Salata kauemmin en saa, ett' elos
Eräässä käännekohdass' on, mi vaatii
Levollisuutta. Voitko maltilla
Sa mua kuulla, voitko maltilla,
Jos huoli sua kohtais' äkkiä,
Sa tuota kestää?

JOLANTHA.

Isä, puhu vaan!

Mun huolen' huojentuu, sun suustas kun
Sen kuulen.

KUNINGAS.

Kuulo siis, Jolanthani.

— Mit' outo tuo on sullo sanonut,
En tiedä. Luulen tok', ett' ilmaissut
Hän on, mit' aivan tarkoin salanneet
Sinulta oomme tähän asti: että
Sun sielus puuttuu mahdikasta lahjaa
Käsittämään maailmaa ympärilläs.
Niin on. Sa puutut näön aistia.

JOLANTHA.

Hän sanoi niin, mut en tuot' ymmärtänyt.

KUNINGAS.

Siis tiedä, että löytyy valon voima.

Ylhäältä, tuulen, raju-ilman lailla
Se tulevi ja yhtä ripsahasti.
Kaikk' esineet, se joihin koskee, saavat
Silt' eri tunnusmerkin, uuden arvon.
Ja lämpymään se liittynyt on usein.
Tien meihin saavuttaa se kautta silmän.
Ja vasta silmän näkövoiman kautta
Maailman rakennuksest' oikean
Me saamme käsitteen, minlaisena
Se lähti Luojan kädestä, ja hänen
Hyvyydestään ja viisaudestansa.
Mit' oot sa vaivoin arvata nyt saanut,
Sit' ohjaa silmä meidät näkemään,
Lajilta, muodost' oitis tuntemaan.
(Mielenliikutuksella.)
Huolemme kaikki korvas' vähän vaan sen
Vahingon, jonka lapsena jo kärseit.
Kaikk', jonka voimme, oli: surun taakkaa
Nuorilla hartioiltas huojentaa,
Ja katkeraa sen juurta sulta peittää.

JOLANTHA.

Oi isä! sanat kummat, mulle oudot.

Maailman rakennus, minlaisena
Se lähti Luojan kädestä, vai tuot' en
Ois tuntenut? se mult' on suljettu?
Kuin niin sa sanot? Enkö siis ma tunne
Luojaani mailman rakennuksest'? Ei!
Siis tuulen väkevyys, sen vieno löyhkä
Ja lämpö, kautta maan kun leviää se,
Ja luonto maan, sen voima kukat, kasvit
Hedelminensä kasvatella, eikö
Metalli, kivi, eikö virran vyöry
Ja lintuin kuorilaulu tuonut ilmi
Luojaani mailman rakennuksessa?
Ja enkö ole sulta, kaikilta,
Jotk' ovat mulle kalliit, saanut tietää
Luojamme tarkotusta mailman suhteen?
Hänenpä tahtons' ilme itsekin
Ma oon. Jos minne käännyn: koko luonnoss',
Omassa itsessän' ja muiden lauseiss',
Äärettömissä jaksoiss' aatteiden,
Kaikissa kohtaa mua sama ääni.
Julistain Jumalaa ja maailmaa.

KUNINGAS (erikseen lääkärille).

 Ah, Ebn Jahia! sulo-uskon tuon
Me oomme häirinneet!

JOLANTHA.

Ja selko mulle
Nyt tehkää: silmän näkövoimall' oon
Mä ymmärtävä mailman. Äskeinen
Tuo outo, jonka puhe syvälle
Mun mieleheni painui, näöstä
Myös hänkin puhui. Mitä siis saan nähdä?
Oi, isä! voinko nähdä hänen äänens',
Mi riemuin, huolin sydämeeni koski?
Mä silmin näenkö satakielen laulun,
Jot' usein miettinyt ma oon ja turhaan
Koetellut aatteissani seurata?
Sen laulu onko kukka, jonka tuoksun
Ma tunnen vaan, mut en sen kasvua,
Ei lehdykkää, ei kantaa?

KUNINGAS.

Lapsi armas!
Mua surettaa jok'aino kysymykses.
Sa tietäös: mull' ompi toivo.
On toivo, joka, piti tähän asti
Isääsi voimass', että näkö voidaan
Sinulle antaa, että silmäs taas
Voi aukeentua valon sätehille.
Opettajas, sun ystäväsi Ebn
Jahia, lääkärinä kauan on
Jo valniistaunut siksi hetkeks', jonka
Hän myöteljääksi ennusti. Nyt on.
Laps' armaisin, se tullut. Hänen haltuun
Hä itses anna. Hänen kanssaan käyt
sä sisään. Marthan myötänne mä lasken.
Sä ensin menet tainnoksiin… ja sitte,
Jos taivas sallii, heräjät sä, lapsen' —

(Keskeytyy.)

JOLANTHA.

Mik' on sun? Miksi kätes vapisee?

Oi isä, etkö riemuitse, ett' on
nyt hetki tullut, jota kauan varroit?
Pelkäätkö, ett' ei tämä onnistu?
Mut enkö sentään jää mä ainiaaksi
Sun tyttärekses, jota rakastat,
Jok' iloitsee sun rakkaudestas,
Osaansa tyytyväisnä —? Laske siis
Nyt mua menemään.

KUNINGAS.

Jolanthani!

JOLANTHA.

Oi, älä pelkää! Minkä mietti viisas

opettajan', se onnistuupi; — niin,
Sen tiedän, mull' on tunne, moinen juur'.
Kuin nyt jo tuntisin tuon kumman voiman,
Valoksi jota sanot, juur' kuin tänään
Jo minuhun se entäis'. Ah, kun hän,
Tuo kumma outo oli täällä, tunteen
Havaitsin, jot' en onnen havainnut;
Ja joka sana, jon hän lausui, kaikuu
Mun sielussan', kuin kanteleessa, uusin,
Ei koskaan ajateltuni sävelein.
— Sanoitpa äsken, että valon voima
On ripsas, että kaikki, johonka
Se koskee, uuden arvon saa, ett' usein
Se liittyy lämpymään — niin, eikö totta,
Sydämen lämpymään? — oi, sen mä tiedän.
Jos tuo se on, jon sanot valoksi,
Niin aavistaapi mua, että tänään
Se mulle ilmestyy. Mut yhdessä
Sä petyt: silmällä ei suinkaan näe.
Vaan täällä, luona sydämen on näkö.
Sisässä tääll' on, sulo-muistelona,
Tuo valon kajastus, mi mua kohtas',
Tuo valo, jota kohden nyt mä lähden.

(Menee sisään Marthan kanssa, joka tällä välin oli lähestynyt.)

KUNINGAS (lääkärille, kun hän on sisään menemäisillänsä).

Oi, varro, Ebn Jahia! — Käsitätkö

Sa tuota? Kenpä lie tuo vieras, joka
Häiritsi hänen sydämensä rauhaa?
Mit' aatella mun tulee puheestaan
Noin innokkaasta? Mitä arvelet?

EBN JAHIA.
 Ei olo nuoren mielenkääntehistä
Juur helppo päättää. Tämän ehkäisee
Mun tuumani, sen myönnän.

KUNINGAS.

Selitäppäs —

EBN JAHIA.

Niin, levon jos hän saapi aatellessaan

Tuot' outoansa — tämä aatos näyttää
Hänessä vallitsevan — niin mä pelkään,
Ett onni taitoan' ei kaunista.
Se puuttuu siten alustaa. Mut ehkä
Tuleepi tässä kohden tarpeen vaihdos,
Jotk' yhdessä, ja yhtä halukkaasti
Kaipaavat tyydykettä. Ollen niin,
On mulla toivoa, mut — vähän vaan.

(Menee sisään.)

KUNINGAS.

Oi Jumala! Ken on tääll' ollut? Bertrand

Sit' eikö tienne —
(Almerik tulee sala-ovesta.)
Almerik! sä täällä?

ALMERIK.

Tuon teille kirjeen.

KUNINGAS.

Kirjeen? Tristanilta?
(Aukaisee kirjeen.)
Niin, hältä on se.
(Lukee.)
Mitä näen mä! — Kuule!
Hän rauhan rikkoo… tekemämme liiton
Hän purkaa tahtoo —

ALMERIK.

Tahtoo liiton purkaa?

KUNINGAS (lukien).

Mi kumma! Myöntää väärin tekevänsä.

Ja senvuoks' asian mun haltuun' jättää:
Mut — epää liiton tyttäreni kanssa!

ALMERIK.

Sit' ylpeää!

KUNINGAS.

Ah, Almerik! Mua noutaa

Mun vanha kova onneni. Mä pelkään,
Ett' enne tää on paha tämän hetken
Tapahtumalle. Tämän naimisen,
Jost' unelmat niin kauniit näin, mä liitin
Keveämielisesti tuohon toivoon,
Ett' taas Jolanthani sais näkönsä.
Mun toinen toivon' petti, toinen lie jo
Perästä tuokion — mut ei! en tahdo
Nureella itseäni halventaa.
Tapahtukoonpa, mitä Luoja sallii.
— Ken kirjoen toi?

ALMERIK.

Yks miesi Jauffredin.

Jauffredin luona Tristan on, hän sanoi.

KUNINGAS.

Jauffredin luon'? No siis on ehkä toivo —

Kenties voi hän — Mut hiljaa! kuulen häikkää
Ja miekkain kalskeen — tuolla käytävässä…

ALMERIK (joka lähenee salakäytävää).

Väkisten ryntävät ne —

KUNINGAS.

Väkisten?
Voi kelvotonta!

ALMERIK.

Väkeämme siell'
On joku vaan.
KUNINGAS.

Nyt miekkaan. Kostamatta

Ei herjaa kenkään kuningas René'tä.
KUUDES KOHTAUS.

Kuningas RENÉ. ALMERIK. TRISTAN välkkyvässä asepuvussa

seuroinensa.
Sitte JAUFFRED seuroinensa.

(Tässä kohtauksessa kajastaa iltarusko laaksossa, ja kaukaisilla

vuorilla, jota kestää näytelmän loppuun asti.)

TRISTAN.

Takaisin! Joukkionne vuoren juurell'

On voitettuna. Vangiks' antaukaatte!

KUNINGAS.

Ken oot sa, hurja, jonka julkeus

Aseilla riivoaapi paikan tään?
Nyt herkee! kostoan' jos tahdot välttää.

TRISTAN.

Sa sanojasi säästä. Min' en pelkää.

Mä kyllä luulen tätä paikkaa jonkun
Pahaisen vallan alaiseksi. Mut
Mua innostaapi valta moinen, jok'
Ei tuota pelkää. Vuoren peikot jos
Sua puoltavat; jos loitsia sa oot,
Mi luotat voimiin salaisiin, niin tiedä:
Mun miekkan' pyhä isä vihki. Vyöni
Marian luostarissa Avignoniss'
On hurskas priorinna ommellut.
Tää asu kätkee aikeen sua häätää,
Kuin pyhä Yrjö lohikäärmettä.

KUNINGAS.

Sä mieletön! Mi tänne sinut saattaa?

TRISTAN.

Sa vastaa! Laakson hallitsia ootko?

KUNINGAS.

Mä kyll' oon hallitsia laakson tään,

Ja enemmänkin; mut ken sinä oot?

(Jauffred tulee sisään seuroineen.)

JAUFFRED.

Mitäpä näen mä! Kuningas René!

(Lankea polvilleen.)
Oi kuninkaani!
 TRISTAN (erikseen).

Kuningas René!

KUNINGAS.

Sa, Jauffred, yksin vehkein kanssa moisen.

Mi rikkoo kuninkahan rauhaa?

JAUFFRED.

Anteeksi
Edellä riensi hän — mä myöhästyin.

KUNINGAS (Tristanille).
No, kenpä oot sa?

TRISTAN.

Vaudemont'in Tristan
Ma oon; sen nimen varmaan tunnetten.

KUNINGAS.

Kuin? Tristan?
(Jauffredille:)
Onko totta?

JAUFFRED.

Totta on se.

KUNINGAS (muistelIen).