An ongoing exhibition at the National Palace Museum of Korea called “Gifts and Records: 140 Years of Korea-France Friendship" offers visitors a rare glimpse into 140 years of Korea-France ties through a handful of carefully selected diplomatic gifts.
The exhibition features a variety of items exchanged between leaders of both countries for more than a century. Among the numerous items on display, five objects stand out as visual symbols of Korea-France relations and its ups and downs.
A pottery bottle is on display in the exhibition “Gifts and Records: 140 Years of Korea-France Friendship” at the National Palace Museum of Korea in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap
One of the most disarming objects in the show is a plump brown pottery bottle once used to serve alcohol. The earthenware vessel, now housed at France’s Sevres National Ceramics Museum, is linked to a shipwreck off the shore of today’s Shinan County, South Jeolla Province, in 1851, indicating face-to-face exchanges decades before the 1866 French invasion of Ganghwa Island and the 1886 Treaty of Friendship and Commerce.
According to historic records, a French whaling ship, the Narval, drifted to the Korean coast after being battered by rough seas while sailing from Le Havre toward the Yellow Sea. Twenty-nine sailors were brought ashore under the care of the local magistrate in Naju, who offered them food and supplies and kept them safe while options for repatriation were negotiated. Charles de Montigny, France’s consul in Shanghai, traveled to Joseon and escorted the crew to Macao.
On the eve of their departure, Korean officials and French sailors reportedly shared drinks, pouring Korean makgeolli (fermented rice alcohol) and French champagne into the same convivial circle. Montigny was believed to have received the bottle as a keepsake of that night, and he took it back to France, where it eventually entered the Sevres collection.
The Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between Korea and France is on display in the exhibition “Gifts and Records: 140 Years of Korea-France Friendship” at the National Palace Museum of Korea in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap
Original copy of Treaty of Friendship and Commerce
The exhibition then shifts from informal encounters to the formal birth of bilateral ties with the 1886 treaty and its ratification documents from 1887.
The document confirms that the two countries fully endorsed the 13-article treaty made the previous year, after protracted negotiations over sensitive issues such as religious freedom. Throughout the 19th century, repeated waves of persecution against Korean Catholics led to the execution of thousands of believers and several French missionaries, turning religious freedom into the most contentious and symbolically charged clause in the treaty.
Source: Korea Times News
