A Retrospective Account of the Early Korea Project at Harvard

Mark E. Byington

Harvard University

Part II. The Problem of Early Korea Studies – A Solution and Its Implementation

Although the prospects for developing the field of Early Korea Studies in western academia looked bleak, I still had hopes that ways could be found to make that field a reality. Developing such a new field through traditional means—securing a faculty position—would not work for reasons already described. By late 2005, despite the success of the Koguryŏ conference held at Harvard in April of that year, I had decided that my career plans would have to change. While considering shifting my career trajectory toward business consulting, banking, or the US public service, I was fortunate enough, as a Harvard alumnus, to be able to audit courses at the Harvard Business School. Inspired by these courses, I realized that it might be possible to develop the field of Early Korea Studies through a business approach. This approach involved analyzing a problem (why Early Korea Studies has not and will not develop normally in western academia), assessing the need (to provide academic coverage in that field), and working out a business plan with an array of programs designed to attain a specific set of goals. Inspired by this possibility, in a single day I quickly drafted a complete prospectus, consisting of a detailed business plan and proposal, the substance of which eventually became the Early Korea Project.

There was no reason that western academia would not welcome Early Korea Studies as a field of study—the problem rested in institutional rigidity within academia that hindered the development of a new field that focused both on Korea and on the early historic and prehistoric periods, neither of which were viewed as high priority subjects. Nevertheless, it was clear to me that western scholars would benefit from the development of the field of Early Korea Studies in numerous ways, and this realization guided my business plan. According to that plan, the Early Korea Project (though as yet unnamed) would provide a centralized organization that functioned to develop the new field of Early Korea Studies in a methodical and guided manner, primarily through academic events, publications, and other forms of outreach. The rationale for engaging in such a project was based on several observations on exactly why the field of Early Korea Studies was needed in western academia. In my proposal I outlined six reasons.

1)      The history of early Korea is a pertinent feature in current events, a recent example being the case involving ancient Koguryŏ in international relations.

2)      Studies on the early history and archaeology of China and Japan have been developed in US academia. It is therefore necessary to include Korea, so that balance may be attained, and so that, in the case of academic dispute, the Korean argument can be readily known and represented.

3)      Scholars who specialize in early China or Japan often need to include Korea in their studies, but most lack the languages skills required to access scholarship in Korean. This has often resulted in outdated or erroneous views of Korean history appearing in English language publications that focus primarily on Korea’s neighboring countries. Some scholars resort to views of Korea and Korean history published in Japanese or Chinese textbooks. There are many examples of this.

4)      The Korean case very often promises to make a positive and useful contribution to various fields and subfields of study, an example being the study of state formation and social evolution, an active field of study in the US, to which the Korean case would provide well-documented examples.

5)      The absence of developed studies on Early Korea in the US leaves a noticeable gap in East Asian Studies as a whole.

6)      Early Korean history and archaeology are active fields of study in East Asia and are themselves areas worthy of the attention of western scholars.

Guided by these observations, I developed a program plan that would develop a foundation for studies of early Korean history and archaeology in ways best suited for ready reception by western scholars. These programs would focus on building that foundation piece by piece through working relations with scholars and institutions in Korea and elsewhere, and by providing the results of those programs to anyone with a need or interest. To accommodate the identification of such individuals, a fairly aggressive market analysis program was included, which involved an active outreach program. The goal was essentially to put Early Korea Studies on the map in western academia in ways that matched or exceeded the equivalent fields of Early China or Early Japan.

Initially I had intended for the Early Korea Project to be an independent organization. However, by early 2006, the Korea Institute at Harvard University offered to provide a home for the fledgling project. This made development much easier, since I could rely on various services (especially financial management) that Harvard provided instead of building them myself. The association with Harvard also made fundraising easier to manage, and it provided an immediate and vibrant academic environment in which the Early Korea Project (and the field of Early Korea Studies) could develop and thrive. One drawback with the Harvard association is that all fundraising would have to be conducted through Harvard’s (and the Korea Institute’s) approved channels, but this did not prove to be a problem at this phase. I presented my prospectus to various public foundations in Korea and made preparations to launch the project, which by this time had been named the Early Korea Project. In April of 2006 I secured office space at Harvard next to the Korea Institute, and I spent May and June consulting with numerous people about the new organization and made a trip to Korea to solicit funding and other support.

While waiting for responses to funding applications, I began to put the components of the Early Korea Project into place. A key move was the formation of a steering committee, formed of all of the scholars in North America whom I knew to be actively researching subjects focused primarily on early Korean history or archaeology. There were only three others besides myself. Professor Jonathan Best of Wesleyan University is a well-known specialist of Paekche history, and his much-welcomed volume on Paekche history had just been published by the Harvard University Asia Center Press in 2006. Professor Richard McBride, now at Brigham Young University in Hawaii, specializes in Silla history and Korean Buddhism. And Martin Bale, then finishing a doctoral program at the University of Toronto, specializes in the Mumun Pottery period of Korean prehistory. The four of us constituted the Early Korea Project Steering Committee and met periodically to determine the best course for the development of the field of Early Korea Studies. There was also an Advisory Committee made up of scholars whose research interest included some coverage of early Korea.

With the core components now in place, the only thing preventing the initiation of Early Korea Project activities was the matter of funding. In November of 2006 the EKP received a generous grant from the Academy of Korean Studies, with which EKP activities commenced with a number of programs, including a series of lectures on Korean archaeology, which were held at Harvard in conjunction with the Harvard East Asian Archaeology Seminar series. Then, beginning in February 2007, the EKP received another generous grant, this time from the Korea Foundation, which was primarily to cover operational expenses. Now with both a program plan and the necessary funding in place, basic programs of the Early Korea Project commenced early in 2007.

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