Incheonhaegwanmunseo

This artefact was collected and held by Jin Gi-hong, a historian of postal history, who donated it to the Korea Customs Service in 1980; it has since been kept at the Seoul Headquarters Customs House. The document is a hardbound volume of 199 leaves, including the hardcover binding, written in English cursive script. Traces of differing pagination suggest that after it left the Incheon Customs House it was rebound several times before reaching its present form. It is generally arranged in order of the date each item was written, though some items have been moved and placed at the point where a related case was concluded, grouped by subject. The Incheonhaegwanmunseo is a file of documents concerning the business of the Incheon Customs House, beginning with the appointment of the Commissioner and other staff when the customs house was established in 1883, and continuing through to September 1885. It contains 121 items in all: 11 from 1883, 13 from 1884 and 97 from 1885. Most are reports submitted by A. B. Stripling to Möllendorff, who was at the time both Inspector-General of Customs at the Incheon Customs House and Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Joseon (equivalent to today's Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs); the rest are documents sent out from the Incheon Customs House and reports made by customs staff to the Commissioner. These documents are therefore thought to survive as a compilation of duplicate copies of correspondence sent from the Incheon Customs House. Among the documents are, alongside matters concerning the operation of the customs house in its early years, two lengthy reports investigating conditions in Joseon. One is a report of 31 March 1885 by F. W. Schulze, a staff member of the Incheon Customs House, to Commissioner A. Stripling, investigating the rice trade of the Jeolla region while sailing to the still-unopened ports of Gunsan, Beopseongpo and the Tenari River on the south-west coast. The other is a report of 21 August 1885 by the Incheon Customs Commissioner Stripling to the Inspector-General of Customs, P. G. von Möllendorff, proposing that, in order to remedy the absence of canals and the poor state of the internal road network in Joseon, remove obstacles to increasing exports, and stimulate the development of Joseon's untapped resources, industrious, intelligent and skilled coloured labourers be brought in from the advanced countries. This document is a useful reference for understanding the degree to which Westerners of the time perceived Joseon. In particular, since the Incheon Customs House held jurisdiction from its opening in 1883 over the five provinces of Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, Jeolla, Hwanghae and Pyeongan, this artefact is important for research into the specific circumstances of customs administration on the west coast in the early years after the ports were opened. It is valuable not only for the study of customs history but also because its contents include maps surveying harbours on Korea's west coast such as Incheon, Gunsan and Mokpo; papers recording monthly climate observations (temperature, fog, rainfall and so on) at Busan, Incheon and Wonsan; the employment contracts, wage records and wage arrears of Incheon customs staff (British, Russian, Japanese and others); the deposit of Korean horseshoe-shaped silver with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation; the state of the rice trade in Jeolla; and the collection of silver ingots. These make it of great help for research into the economic, diplomatic, maritime and climatic history of the mid-1880s. Whereas most customs-related material held at Seoul National University's Kyujanggak archive dates from after 1885, these documents cover reports from January 1883 to September 1885 and, being written by hand by staff from the very earliest days of Korea's customs service, they have high value as records worth preserving.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Gangnam-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산