London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Amazing photos of early 20th century Korea

I paste below the text of an email just received from the curator of the Korean Heritage Library at the University of Southern California. Well worth a look.

I am pleased to announce the publication of some RARE images of Korea on the Korean Heritage Library’s Website. The most complete captions currently available for these images are viewable by hovering your cursor over any image. When this collection is published via USC’s Digital Archive next year, the captions will be available with the images in a more convenient fashion. The title of this collection is, “The Rev. Corwin and Nellie Taylor Collection of Korean Photographs, 1908-1922”

Namdaemun
Sample photo from Korean Digital Archive – Seoul’s South Gate

The photographic images in this collection were preserved for posterity by Rev. Corwin Taylor and his wife Nellie Blood-Taylor of Fort Dodge, Iowa, Methodist missionaries to Korea, 1908 to about 1922.

These digital images have been donated to the Korean Heritage Library at the University Of Southern California, Los Angeles California, by Corwin / Nellie grandson Ewing Bevard Taylor of Rockville, Maryland. This project was undertaken by Ewing Bevard Taylor at the behest of journalist Kyung Won Lee of Rancho Cordova, California. Digitization work by James Ritchie Jacocks (James Ritchie Associates) of Washington Grove, Maryland.

The original b&w prints and hand-colored slides / transparencies from which the digital images have been made, and the photo descriptions / documentation, were produced by / for the Methodist Episcopal Church, Committee On Conservation And Advance, Chicago, Illinois, and distributed to church missionaries.

Update 23 November 2006: The USC has been updating their website and all the URLs seem to have changed. The home page of the Korean Heritage Library is now here, and the Rev. Corwin and Nellie Taylor Collection is here.

One thought on “Amazing photos of early 20th century Korea

  1. Thank you,

    I’ve checked out the website have found their electronic database which is also very useful 🙂

    Their collection is quite extensive and impressive!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.