Name: [Colloquium] 'Between curiosity and colonial ambition'
Start: 2026-04-23T18:00:00+09:00
End: 2026-04-23T20:00:00+09:00
Location: ARI - Asiatic Research Institute 고려대학교 아세아문제연구소

[Colloquium] 'Between curiosity and colonial ambition'

FULL TITLE:
Between curiosity and colonial ambition: Self-image, strategies and contemporary perception of German research and collection expeditions to late Chosŏn
SPEAKER: Lars F. Köppen

The April 2026 session of the “Seoul Colloquium in Korean Studies” organized by the Seoul Center of the EFEO will be held as an in-person event on Thursday April 23th in the Grand Conference Room (Room number 310), of the Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University, beginning at 6:00 pm.
All who wish to participate must register in advance by sending an email to < [email protected] >

DATE: Thursday. April 23, 2024. 6:00PM
VENUE: Grand Conference Room (#310), of the Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University
Take Exit 1 from Korea University subway station, turn right onto the footpath leading up onto the campus. Walk straight up the road past LG Posco Hall, the Business School and Main Library (all on the right hand side). The Asiatic Research Institute (ARI) is the building next after the Main Library (Campus Map https://www.korea.edu/campusMap/en/view.do#this )
After 6 PM the front door of the Institute may be locked. If the door is locked, phone to the EFEO Seoul Center (02-921-4526) so that we can let you into the building.
[Image: Advertisement for artwork from China, Japan and Korea in a German local newspaper. (© Lübeck City Library)]

SUMMARY:
Between the first bilateral Korean-German treaty in 1883 and the outbreak of the First World War, a few dozen Germans entered Korea and brought back home a wide collection of ethnographic objects and scientific samples. How did they collaborate? How did they interpret their roles and how were they perceived by others? How did the collections and publications shape the image Germans had of Korea? The overarching question is who generated knowledge about Korea in the 19th and early 20th century and with which purpose they did it.
BIO:
Lars F. Köppen earned a master’s degree from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg with a thesis on workplace conflicts under socialism in East Germany in 2017. Since then, he has worked in several museums and archives across Northern Germany, currently at the Hanseatic City Archive in Lübeck. In 2023, he joined the Korean-German Forum for Comparative History (한독비교사포럼) and completed the Kyujanggak Korean Studies Summer Workshop at Seoul National University. He is enrolled as a PhD candidate at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel.