Opening Remark to the 1999 Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the Korean Humanities

Richard Grinker

The George Washington University

Good morning. My name is Richard Grinker and I am a professor of Anthropology and International Relations here at George Washington. It is a great honor to convene the 1999 Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium. Those of you who have participated before will remember that this colloquium series is made possible by an endowment established by Hahn Moo-Sook’s estate and Young-Key Kim-Renaud, the first child of Hahn Moo-Sook and Professor of Korean Language and Culture and International Affairs at GW.

Before we begin our today's program, I want to introduce the colloquium, and to do so by reading to you portions of a foreword to Han Moo-Sook’s book Mannam (Encounter) written by her daughter, Young-Key Kim-Renaud, for the Polish edition. So I will read from Professor Kim-Renaud’s foreword:

"Hahn Moo-Sook, as I remember her, sought truth, goodness and beauty throughout her life. She celebrated life and human beings even with the full awareness of their weaknesses. Her painter’s eye captured the beauty in the visible and the invisible. Forever curious about new things and ideas, she deeply believed that encounters are good and enrich our lives. She practiced this belief by welcoming into her home people from all walks of life and from every corner of the world.

"Her life in fact is a story of encounters. Hahn Moo-Sook was born into a progressive yet very traditional old Korean family. She had a strict early education which emphasized propriety and knowledge of the classics. Through translated works, she cam to meet the West, a source of endless wonder to her. She also took special lessons in Western-style painting to develop a talent that she revealed at a very young age.

"Ironically, it was not her meeting with the West but her arranged marriage into an archconservative Korean family that shocked her the most. She often said that when she was reaching complete despair at that time, it was the life within her womb that saved her. That’s how I, the first of her five children, contributed to modern Korean literature! What really made her marvel, however, was her discovery that the differences between her own and her husband’s families were only superficial. The two families shared the same deep-rooted cultural values. Her Korean sense of identity, that had become faint after years of Japanese [occupation] suddenly became solidified. Silently, but forcefully, she said to herself, "I want to write."

"Not all her encounters in life have been happy and positive. Soon after she wrote a major novel entitled And So Flows History, the Korean War broke out, taking away the lives of relatives and friends. However, it was with the tragic [automobile] accident that killed her third child, a promising young medical doctor and a concert cellist whom everyone adored, that she met death in a most personal and intense way. When she finally "came back to life" after [a period of deep depression] her literature showed a maturity that only such extreme experiences could bring--and that maturity led to the novel Mannam ("Encounter")--a novel about multiple encounters: between Confucianism and Christianity, moral integrity and pragmatic survival instincts, between East and West.

"Often bed-ridden from her ill health, Hahn Moo-Sook read Western and Japanese literature avidly. Steeped in her own tradition, she had an immediate yet profound appreciation of Western and other foreign traditions. At the same time, she was eager to explain Korea and Koreans to the people of different cultures."


This colloquium series attempts to fulfill Hahn Moo-Sook’s spirit of openness, curiosity, and education.