By Digging through Google Books for contemporary (1860s) material on Korea (Corea back then) related to the General Sherman Incident, I came across this interesting piece from the US foreign policy archives on the trial of a real-life American tomb raider.:
Below are some more quotes from this summary. If you go to the document itself, you’ll see below it is a lengthy account of the testimony from the tribunal.
7:47 pm on May 4th, 2011 1
Excellent post, usinkorea!
I’m familiar with this incident, but it’s interesting to read a contemporary account.
The guy responsible for this was a grade-A jackass for what he was trying to do, but I can just imagine a contemporary blogger metropoliticking something like, “Look how the Coreans were overreacting to these foreigners who were just conducting a little off-the-map tourism… shouldn’t Corea be encouraging tourists?! Corea branding — FAIL!”
8:19 pm on May 5th, 2011 2
Kushibo -
Actually I am not sure which of those involved was the biggest jackass. Oppert truly is to be vilified for a lot of things but I think if you go back and examine the material you will see that he was swayed by the French Priest and it is he – the priest – that I feel was the greater jackass.
8:22 pm on May 5th, 2011 3
You may be right. Korea being overrun amoral American adventurists and French of questionable motives… Nothing really has changed much in the past century and a half, it seems.