The Uigwe: Royal Books That Came Home from France

Full transcript

Annyeong, yeoreobun! It's Yul. These books look quiet and polite. But they have one of the wildest stories in the whole museum. These are the uigwe, the royal protocol books of the Joseon dynasty.

Whenever the Joseon court held a big event, a royal wedding, a funeral, a coronation, they wrote everything down. Who attended, what they wore, how much money was spent, and even beautiful painted pictures of the whole procession. Hundreds of people, horses, and flags, all in a row. It's like a super-detailed event report, made with art.

The most precious copies were made just for the king, and kept in a special royal library on Ganghwa Island, called Oegyujanggak.

Then came 1866. French navy ships attacked Ganghwa Island. When they left, they took hundreds of these royal books with them to France. For more than a hundred years, Korea didn't even know exactly where they were.

Here's the hero of the story. A Korean historian named Park Byeong-seon worked at the National Library of France. She searched and searched, and in the 1970s, she found the uigwe in the library's storage. After decades of talks between the two countries, in 2011, two hundred ninety-seven volumes finally came back to Korea. Technically, it's a long-term loan, but they're home.

Yul's tip! Look at the procession paintings in the uigwe on display. Find the king's palanquin, and count the people around it. Joseon events were huge K-pop-concert-level productions. And remember Dr. Park's name. Sometimes one person's patience brings history home.