António Corea

António Corea or António Korea was a Korean slave who was taken to Italy. He is possibly the first Korean to have set foot in Europe. Little is known about Corea's life; he is attested to only briefly in a travelogue by his Italian master Francesco Carletti. Corea was enslaved during the 1592–1598 Imjin War and taken to Nagasaki, Japan. There, he was purchased by Carletti around 1597. They left Japan and arrived in the Netherlands around 7 July 1602. Later, Carletti wrote that Corea had settled in Rome.

In the 20th century, Corea's story drew significant attention in South Korea, where popular media such as books and plays have been produced about him. Concurrently, a number of theories proliferated about Corea that are not known to be supported by evidence. It has been theorized that Corea has living descendents in the Italian village of Albi, Calabria. Recent genetic tests and surname analyses suggest this is unlikely but still possible. It has been theorized that Corea is the subject of a famous sketch by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens dubbed . But in 2016, two historians published a paper expressing doubt on this theory.

Background

Relatively few Koreans left the Korean peninsula before the late 19th century. However, during the 1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Korea, tens of thousands of Koreans were enslaved and taken to Japan, with the first shipment in October 1592. From there, they were exported primarily to other parts of Asia.

Biography António Corea (his European name) was a Korean who was captured during the Japanese invasions and taken to Nagasaki, Japan as a slave. In 1597, Carletti arrived in Nagasaki, where he eventually purchased Corea and four other Koreans. Carletti had his Korean slaves convert to Christianity and took them to Goa in India, whereupon he set them free. He departed Goa for Europe with Corea and several others. During the journey, Carletti and Corea were taken hostage by Dutch sailors at the island of Saint Helena. According to Carletti, Corea managed to trick the Dutch into not leaving him behind on Saint Helena by portraying his relatively worthless copper necklace as valuable, and thus enticing them into taking him aboard. Carletti and Corea arrived in Middelburg, Zeeland, Netherlands on either 6 July or 7 July 1602. According to Carletti, Corea then eventually settled in Rome.

Carletti wrote of Corea in his travelogue My Voyage Around the World:

Theories about Corea Since the early 20th century, a number of theories about Corea have been repeated by media and academic sources. However, these are now considered unsupported by the known sparse evidence on Corea. The proliferation and persistence of these theories can be attributed to the exciting nature of Corea's story, as well as insufficient factchecking by both the media and by several academics.

Biographical details

Rome-based South Korean reporter Kim Seong-u claimed that Corea was from the city of Namwon, and this claim was repeated for decades, but there is no known evidence for this. The portrait drew significant attention; in 1983 it was sold at a Christie's auction for £324,000, which was the highest ever sum paid for such a sketch.

Kwak Cha-seop supported this theory in his 2004 book on the basis of his own analysis of the subject's clothing. He also argued it was possible (but still uncertain) that Corea had met with Rubens in Rome around July 1606 to October 1608. In 2015, South Korean art historian Noh Seong-du challenged these claims. He argued that the clothes looked more Chinese (based on a forensic reconstruction of the cut-off top and bottom portions of the portrait), and also argued that the 1606–1608 dates conflicted with the general consensus that the portrait was from 1617.

A 2016 paper by art historians Weststeijn and Gesterkamp drew international attention for proposing an alternate theory about the subject. The scholars found a very similar drawing from a book that is believed to predate Rubens' drawing. They proposed that Rubens had based his sketch on that original drawing. Accompanying text described the subject of the drawing as a Chinese merchant named Yppong. Corea arrived in the Netherlands a little over a year after Yppong's departure back to Asia.

Legacy After Kim Seong-u's 1979 article, Corea's story captured the imagination of the South Korean public. Interest in Corea reached a climax by 1992: the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the Japanese invasions. That year, a musical entitled The Everlasting Flute , which was reportedly inspired by Corea's story, was produced. In 1993, author O Se-yeong published a novel inspired by Corea's story entitled The Merchant of Venice . The book was a bestseller, and sold more than two million copies by 1994. Around this time, another novel entitled António Corea was also published. In 2015, South Korean president Park Geun-hye visited the J. Paul Getty Museum, where the Man in Korean Costume portrait is held.