Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch

"[2] The Society was first established on June 16, 1900, when a founding meeting attended by seventeen men (all but four of them Protestant missionaries) was held in the Reading Room of the Seoul Union Club.

[3] Among those present at the inaugural meeting were the acting British Chargé d'affaires, J. H. Gubbins, (who became the first president) and the missionaries James Scarth Gale,[4] Homer B. Hulbert,[5] George Heber Jones, Horace Grant Underwood, Henry Gerhard Appenzeller,[6] D. A. Bunker and William B.

[7] Other missionaries who were members of the RASKB from the very start included the medical doctors Horace N. Allen, Oliver R. Avison and the Anglican priest (later bishop) Mark Napier Trollope.

[11] Among the reasons for this interruption may be cited the death or departure from Korea of many of the founding members, and the troubling events of those years, including the Russo-Japanese War and the annexation of the Korean Empire by Japan in 1910.

[13] They cover a great variety of topics, ranging from the remotest origins of Korean culture, through descriptions of ancient monuments and temples, through lists of the plants and animals found in Korea, to surveys of contemporary gold-mining and ginseng-production.

[18] There were increasing numbers of foreigners living in South Korea, not only diplomats and missionaries but also military, educational and business personnel from many countries.

For a considerable period, the RASKB was alone in providing such programs and the lists of members found at the end of most volumes of Transactions soon rose to over a thousand.

Writing in the Korea Times, RAS-Korea President Steve Shields said, "In November, the RAS Council voted, with heavy hearts and an overwhelming sense of loss, to close the doors and dissolve the legal governing entity of the society.

"[19] Today, when South Korea is a major figure on the international stage, with hundreds of thousands of foreign residents, the RASKB continues to offer a regular program of lectures, usually twice each month held at the Somerset Palace in downtown Seoul, and excursions and walking tours on weekends.

The first two characters mean the hibiscus region, referring to Korea, while the other two (luxuriant mugwort) are a metaphor inspired by Confucian commentaries on the Chinese Book of Odes, and could be translated as “enjoy encouraging erudition”.