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Winner of the Hendrik-Hamel-Prize for Korean Studies in Europe 2021

This year’s Hendrik-Hamel-Prize for Korean Studies in Europe was designated for Korean Studies publications in European languages other than English. We congratulate Dr. Eunsil Yim (Université de Paris) for winning the prize.

Eunsil Yim
Être Coréens au Kazakhstan. Les entrepreneurs d’identité aux frontières du monde coréen.
[Being Koreans in Kazakhstan. Identity Entrepreneurs at the Borders of the Korean World] Paris: Institut d’Études Coréennes, coll. Kalp’i, Collège de France, 2016

In her meticulous study, Eunsil Yim details how the Korean minority in Kazakhstan had to reposition and reinvent itself in the political, economic, social and ethnic upheaval that followed in the wake of the protracted disintegration of the Soviet Union. The lucid manner in which she combines a diachronic approach with transversal glimpses of the changing social space within which various (social and institutional) agents position themselves is of a rare beauty. This is area studies at its best. Written from the periphery, this is empirically dense research; deeply rooted in the terrain, informed by local voices and perspectives, solidly grounded in theory and with sufficient critical distance to lift the anecdotal to a higher level of insight and relevance.

The following two publications have been short-listed for the prize :

Guillaume Carré
Avant la Tempête. La Corée et la Menace Japonaise, 1530-1590
[Before the storm: Korea and the Japanese Threat, 1530-1590] Paris, Institut d’Études Coréennes, coll. Kalp’i, 2019

Guillaume Carré’s book updates and expands in novel ways our knowledge of the critical period just before the Great East Asian War, particularly concerning the role of silver circulation and of military technology. Carré has given us an excellent study that helps round out with the Korean component a new, emerging view of East Asian relations in the sixteenth century as a time when the inter-connected early-modern world was forming.

Felix Siegmund
Theorie und Praxis militärischen Wissens zwischen China und Korea im langen 17. Jh.
[Theory and Practice of Military Knowledge between China and Korea during the long 17th century] Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018

Felix Siegmund’s book on military theory and practice in the Chinese-Korean border region during the 17th century concerns not only the circulation of explicit and implicit knowledge but affords glimpses into the local community of soldiers, bandits, hunters, vagrants, and fugitives. It received special praise for its source-rich treatment of an understudied topic and for its high level of methodological reflection.