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Seoul National University on Tuesday disclosed that 47 books of the Annals of the Chosun/Choson Dynasty looted during Japanese colonial rule will be returned by Tokyo University in mid-July. The annals from the royal archive previously preserved in Mt. Odae in Gangwon Province that became a symbol of our loss of sovereignty are finally coming back to their now independent home country a century after they were stolen.
The annals were taken to Tokyo University Library in 1913 by Masatake Terauchi, the first governor-general of Korea; most of the over 760 volumes were lost in a fire in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, and only 74 books fortuitously borrowed at the time escaped the flames. Twenty-seven books were returned to Keijo Imperial University, the predecessor of Seoul National University, in 1932. It has taken until now for the remainder to be returned. Listed as National Treasury No. 151, the Annals of the Chosun/Choson Dynasty chronicle the kingdom's 472-year history on a day-by-day basis and are among the great historical documents of the world.
The Buddhist organization that looks after the Mt. Odae archive in March launched a return drive by forming a committee, while lawmakers formed their own association seeking the annals¡¯ return. But without Tokyo University's judgment that looted cultural properties must be given back, the return would have been difficult to realize, however loud the clamor for it. That is why Ahn Hwi-joon, chairman of National Committee for Cultural Properties, said the return of the annals shows ¡°the good sense of Tokyo University and Japanese intellectuals."
Tokyo University's decision contrasts sharply with France's reluctance to give back 297 ancient Korean ritual texts looted by French naval forces in 1866 from the Chosun Kingdom's royal archive, known as Oegyujanggak. For 15 years, negotiations have produced nothing. The late French president Francois Mitterand promised to return them at a 1993 summit, but librarians at French National Library in Paris, the custodians of the books, refuse.
Some 74,434 Korean articles of cultural importance remain abroad, 46 percent of them in Japan. In February, Akinao Fuzitsuka, the son of a professor at Keijo Imperial University, returned over 2,700 relics including 20-plus letters from the Confucian scholar Chusa Kim Chong-hui, while 135 items from the estate of the late Japanese Army chief were returned to Kyungnam University by Yamaguchi Prefectural University a decade ago. That was achieved through private efforts. The return of the Mt. Odae archive annals, too, mainly succeeded because of negotiations between SNU and Tokyo University. But the job is the government¡¯s. So far, it has limited its efforts to discovering the whereabouts of these articles abroad. It must make more systematic and active endeavors to retrieve them.
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