Yoo Hong-june, director of the National Museum of Korea, said on the 15th that the disputed calligraphy by Park Choong-yang (1874-1959), a pro-Japanese collaborator, was one of the works he had planned to donate to the Buyeo Cultural Center in Buyeo County, South Chungcheong Province, for the construction of a county museum. Yoo said he wanted to "apologize once again" over the controversy.
According to Yoo, he signed an agreement with Buyeo County in September 2016 to donate free of charge the white porcelain, paintings, calligraphy and household items in his collection. Buyeo County appraisal records show that the 865 artifacts Yoo donated through 2024 were valued at 2.7 billion won (about $1.9 million). They include modern calligraphy by figures such as independence leader Kim Koo, Kim Ok-gyun and Yu Kil-chun. The works have been shown annually in Buyeo as a "donated artifacts exhibition."
Buyeo County is pursuing construction of a county museum built around Yoo's donated collection. Yoo has previously said he built a residence called Hyuhyudang in Bangyo-ri, Oesan-myeon, Buyeo County, in 2006 and divides his time between Seoul and Buyeo.
The disputed calligraphy by Park Choong-yang was among the artifacts to be donated additionally to Buyeo County, and Yoo submitted it as a related artifact to the special exhibition "Our Tables" at the National Museum of Korea, which he heads. His intentions were not ill, but the problem grew once the work turned out to be by a pro-Japanese collaborator rather than an independence activist.
The original owner of the work, which had not been disclosed at first, came to light recently during a parliamentary audit. Rep. Jung Yeon-wook of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, asked the National Museum of Korea who the original owner was, and released to the media the museum's reply that it had "borrowed the work on the director's recommendation" and that "the original holder of the work was Director Yoo."
In its written reply to Jung's office, the museum said it "came to use the work in the exhibition through due procedure following the director's recommendation," and that it "judged the work to be by the patriot Park (Park Won-geun) based on an assessment of accounts including those relayed by the holder (Director Yoo), and because the signature at the end of the work read 'Park Won-geun, a Korean,' the piece was not identified at the time of the exhibition as the work of a pro-Japanese collaborator or of a figure listed in the dictionary of pro-Japanese figures."
The National Museum of Korea had earlier displayed the calligraphy "Ilban si gukeun" — meaning that even a single bowl of rice is a favor owed to the nation — at the "Our Tables" special exhibition, describing it as the handwriting of Park Won-geun (1912-1950), a patriotic independence activist from Boeun, North Chungcheong Province. The phrase was spoken by the monk-general Yeonggyu during the Japanese invasions of 1592, and many people later wrote it out in calligraphy. The piece was subsequently found to have been written by Park Choong-yang, the pro-Japanese collaborator, using the name "Park Won-geun," and the museum immediately removed it from the exhibition.
Earlier, as soon as the dispute over the work's attribution arose, Yoo publicly apologized, saying that "failing to read the exact meaning of the artifact was a lack of capability and a mistake."
The National Museum of Korea also said in a notice at the time that "the work was selected after internal review, but cross-verification by experts in each field, such as on handwriting and the figure's background, was insufficient." It added that it would "more systematically organize expert consultations conducted for future exhibition planning to strengthen the pre-verification stage, expand the pool of experts in the modern and contemporary field, and do its utmost in verifying exhibition items so that the same thing does not happen again."