KOREA FOUNDATION

Dr. Tony D. Qian,
Visiting Scholar at the Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC)

I am very grateful for the support of the Korea Foundation’s Field Research Fellowship, which first opened up an opportunity for me to come to Korea and expand my interest in legal decisions to those from the Chosŏn era. With a better understanding of Chosŏn law, I could study the impact of Confucianism and classical learning on two related, but distinct, pre-modern legal systems—Korean and Chinese. My research has always focused on how law fits into the wider field of the humanities, and I believe that our modern legal systems can benefit from an understanding of how pre-modern societies viewed the relationship between  law and justice. I was glad to be able to come to Korea to learn about a legal system that I knew little about.

The inconveniences caused by COVID-19 were inevitable, and I had to delay the start of my fellowship by one year. But the staff at the KF were excellent and addressed all my questions in a helpful manner. Accessing archives and meeting with the experts in the Korean legal field were also challenges under COVID restrictions, but I received tremendous support from the Seoul National University (SNU) Asia Center in my research, including library access and a platform to reach out to other scholars. I was invited to give a talk titled “Literary Ornaments and Narratives in Legal Decisions of the Late Chosŏn” at the Asia-Pacific Law Forum at the SNU School of Law, and also organized webinars on Confucianism and East Asian law that involved scholars in legal and literary studies at SNU and other Korean and American universities. My wife and I, with our two young children, are especially grateful to the KF for its financial support during that time.

At the end of my KF Fellowship period, I received an appointment to be a lecturer at SNU, where I now teach. I continue to do research on Chosŏn legal collections, especially the Simnirok 審理錄, and to learn from the law specialists at SNU, while working on publishing articles on my findings.

Tony D. QianSeoul National UniversityVisiting ScholarChosŏnLegal Decisions