Redemption and Regret: Modernizing Korea in the Writings of James Scarth Gale

As the second volume in the James Scarth Gale Library of Korean Literature series, this book is a welcome addition to the efforts to highlight Gale's legacy to the field of Korean studies. James Gale, a Canadian missionary to Korea (1888–1927), made profound contributions by introducing Korean history, language, and Korean traditional literature (in Literary Sinitic, hanmun) to anglophone audiences. Gale was a prolific writer and most of his writings and translations survived, housed in the Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. However, Gale's scholarship has been understudied and much of his works, especially his literary translations, remain unexplored by scholars (4).This publication presents two of Gale's unpublished typescripts—Pen Pictures of Old Korea (1912, hereafter Pen Pictures) and Old Korea (ca. 1923)—extending the scope of the series beyond Gale's literary translations to his diverse works on Korean history, politics, language, culture, and religion. With his insightful analysis, Pieper sheds light on Gale's journey, beginning as a missionary and growing into “a dedicated Koreanist” (626). Pieper's helpful introductions make this book an indispensable guide to Gale's life, scholarship, and his “fascinating snapshot of Korea's dramatic, contested, and often wrenching modernization process” (628).This book consists of two parts. Pen Pictures is a collection of forty-three individual short essays covering a wide range of topics, including but not limited to Gale's interests in Korean literature. For example, in his essay, titled “Unconscious Korea,” Gale poignantly criticizes Korean politics. He offers a theological analysis of the Korean understanding of “Eternal Life.” Gale also writes about the history and practices of Korean people's mundane life, ranging from marriage and courtship to tobacco. Another recurring theme is a conversion narrative. In “Happy Yi,” Gale carefully observes and reflects on his interlocutors' minds and attitudes toward life and faith.Old Korea includes forty essays presented under various themes, such as “Corea's Noted Women,” “Social and Allied Subjects,” “Ancient Remains,” and “Superstitions.” Gale's in-depth knowledge of diverse topics and detail-oriented writings present vivid pictures of Korean history and culture. This collection also has forty-nine translations of Korean literature, short stories and poems, and Korea's well-known classical fiction (kojǒn sosǒl), “The Story of Unyǒng” (Unyǒng chǒn). As Pieper points out, Old Korea shows Gale's “literary turn” where the focus of his activities and interests are shifted to Korean hanmun literature translation (5). Pieper argues that this shift reflects Gale's pursuit to “affirm Korea's cultural greatness by dint of its participation in a transnational and diachronic sinographical tradition” (35).In connecting the wide-ranging topics, Pieper approaches the task in a holistic way. He uses Gale's “conflicted” but “hybrid” identity as a lens and theorizes how Gale's works are shaped by his complex identity as a missionary, scholar, educator, and literary translator (18). As the book title “Redemption and Regret” implies, Gale, as a devoted missionary, hoped for the redemption of Korea both from her “superstitions” and premodern status through evangelization and modernization. But, at the same time, Gale's “Koreaphile persona” regretted that modernizing Korea was losing her legacies of premodern history, especially as Gale puts it, “the tragic death of native literature,” (338) referring to the cosmopolitan literary tradition of hanmun. In his approach, Pieper is also mindful of reading white missionary's accounts of his mission field and aptly forewarns his readers of Western triumphalism and Orientalism occasionally nuanced in Gale's works.Pieper's analysis of the life and career of Gale raises many interesting questions. For example, Pieper interprets Gale's shifting focus to English translations of hanmun literature as his journey of discerning a “true calling as the mouthpiece of Classical Korean literature to the Anglophone world” (626). However, one may wonder whether Gale's later translations can be understood as a way of continuing his missionary project under the surveillance of the Japanese colonial government against Western missionaries in Korea. As Pieper also points out, Gale's works “should be understood within the broader scholar-missionary project to understand the Korean people” (60). This conversation is only one of many more discussions that this book may foreground.This book is an excellent primary and secondary source. Pieper treats the original text carefully, and when there are multiple versions available, he provides line-by-line comparison and analysis. All of Gale's translation works are provided with their original texts mostly in hanmun but also occasionally in hangeul for those who want to explore the texts further. The editor's introduction to the book and notes to Gale's essays are illuminating. Through his extensive research rich in depth and breadth, Pieper contextualizes Gale's writings within the social and political landscapes of the time and puts Gale into conversation with scholars and thinkers across time and regions. In addition, Pieper's thorough and knowledgeable footnotes make this book even more accessible for those who are not familiar with Korea.One minor challenge in using this book as a resource is that some essay titles are too vague to easily reference. Gale titles his essays in interesting but nonintuitive ways, especially in Pen Pictures. So, the table of contents leaves readers with a long list of essays without navigation. Some examples include “The Mystery of It” and “My Lord the Elephant.” Readers would have greatly benefited from the editor's subheadings on the topics of the essays in the table of contents to locate the subjects of their interest. However, this book has a thorough and helpful index to search for specific passages.Overall, I highly recommend this book to students and scholars across various fields of study, including Korean studies, religious studies, comparative literature, and World Christianity. This book is an essential resource for a self-guided tour of premodern Korean history and literature whether Korea is a foreign land or a familiar location to the reader.

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