Han Hung-su - the father of Czechoslovak Korean studies

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Korean historian Han Hung-su spent twelve long years in Europe, personally affected by dramatic historical moments such as the occupation of Austria, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, the liberation of Czechoslovakia, the expulsion of the German population, and the division of his native Korea. After studying in Tokyo, Vienna, Bern, and Freiburg and working at the State Ethnological Museum in Vienna, Han Hung-su settled in Prague for five years in 1943. In the house now known as the “Werich Villa,” he wrote a series of academic and popular articles, followed by a book on the history of Korea. A tireless promoter of his country, he also left behind translations of Korean literature into German and Czech, and from Czech into Korean—as well as a group of students who would later lay the foundations for Korean studies, a field of Oriental studies that did not exist in Europe at the time. Although Han Hung-su was an exceptionally educated archaeologist and prehistorian for his time, with his work published in five languages, his name and legacy have fallen into oblivion. In North Korea, where he was personally invited by the North Korean leader Kim Il-sung himself, he founded modern archaeology and museology, but his contributions were “erased” after he disappeared in one of the political purges around 1953. In Europe, his obscurity was aided by the fact that he lived, worked, and published on both sides of the emerging Iron Curtain during his lifetime. This book is thus the first systematic attempt to reconstruct his life and to commemorate the works he wrote in Prague, which initiated the study of Korea in what was then Czechoslovakia.