The Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology

In this second volume of The International Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology, the aim has been to make available recent published research by Korean scholars, and to bring the translations of the chosen articles to international readers in as clear a manner as possible. Some Korean terms have no exact equivalents in English, or even in Chinese: in this volume, a glossary, compiled from all the articles, is provided as an aide-mémoire. This provides not only the Chinese characters, but in most cases a brief definition, reign dates of rulers, and for individuals, dates of birth and death. It is hoped that in future volumes, the translators will be bolder in rendering such terms directly into English, and in the meantime, that readers themselves will comment on the usefulness of this feature, as a guide to its provision in future volumes.

• The articles themselves have been chosen with care by the Editorial Board, with the aim of introducing important issues in the field of Korean Art and Archaeology, and accordingly they range widely in time and subject-matter. Two of them concern the archaeology and architecture of ancient Goguryeo: its pottery tradition with origins in the Neolithic, and the plans of its earliest Buddhist temples, in as far as they can be determined from the remains of excavated foundations. The recent publication of Horyuji Reconsidered (ed. Dorothy C. Wong with Eric M. Field, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), with papers by distinguished authors presenting the famous Nara temple and its architecture in the context of Buddhism's transmission from Korea and China, shows the rich potential and cross-cultural importance of such architectural studies.

• A third article deals directly with the growing number of representations of Koreans in mural paintings and on artifacts discovered in China or elsewhere in Asia. Such representations are eloquent testimony to the perception of Koreans, and particularly those from Goguryeo, in China and across Asia as far as Dunhuang and Samarkand. Some are labelled Gaoli or Gaoliguo, clearly referring to Goguryeo, even at a time when the latter had been supplanted by Unified Silla. The depictions of Koreans wearing caps or headdresses decorated with two feathers, one on each side of the head, are nicely corroborated by historical materials describing Koreans.

• Readers will be familiar with the amazing wealth of ceramics recovered from the Sinan shipwreck, a number of years ago; the article in this volume on another shipwreck, off the island of Biando, will be news to most. In comparison with field archaeology, underwater archaeology is difficult and time-consuming to undertake, but the rewards are great, in terms of the recovery, often largely intact, of a great number of pieces caught, as it were, in the moment of their transport from one port or one country to another, shedding light on the all-important trade and cultural contacts between those countries at a particular time. In this case, although the precise destination is uncertain, it proves possible to identify with a fair degree of certainty the kiln or kilns from which the majority of the cargo came.

• The article on artifacts inlaid with mother-of-pearl also concerns cultural transmission, in this case of a technique originating in China, and then transformed and made truly Korean by the use of the same materials used in a totally distinctive way, and identified particularly with the Goryeo dynasty and with Buddhism, since Buddhist practitioners were the principal users of sutra cases, incense boxes and even fly whisks. The subject has also been studied in the west, for example in the Metropolitan Museum's Arts of Korea (1998), and the exhibition of the Goryeo Dynasty at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2003). Further research is needed to provide a more accurate chronology of this craft's development in Korea from the Silla period onwards and throughout the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties.

• Two articles concern the Joseon dynasty more particularly: one, on flower and bird painting, demonstrates the close affinity between this genre in Korea and its counterpart in China, with the names of many artists who were specialists in the depiction of flora and fauna; the other, more particularly concerned with Joseon, examines in great detail a genre of court painting that must have existed in China as well, but which has not so far been well studied, namely paintings, whether hanging scrolls, folding screens, or albums, that document court ceremonies. In the case of this article, the paintings are those that concern the education and upbringing of the Crown Prince, complemented by historical records on the same. Perhaps only in Confucian Korea was there such a zeal for recording every detail of such ceremonies. With yellow lines to indicate the positions and movements of the Crown Prince and the officials in charge of his education, not all the paintings can be regarded as high art, but they are immensely helpful for the view they provide of daily life at the Joseon court.