Joseon-era palace signboard to be revealed this month is latest repatriation from Japan

Of the artifacts that Korea has yet to reclaim from overseas, nearly half are located in Japan, according to the Korea Heritage Service.
Of the 247,718 Korean artifacts outside the country, some 43.9 percent, or 108,705, are held by institutions and individuals in Japan.
The US holds 26.6 percent of Korean artifacts abroad while Germany, China and the UK account for 6.2 percent, 5.7 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.
The figures, the latest in the annual survey, were obtained from a review of 801 museums and galleries in 29 countries.
The state-run heritage agency identified 1,414 more artifacts than the previous year, an increase the agency attributed to a stronger push to locate and bring home Korean artifacts.
Starting this year, the agency said it will mobilize its Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation offices in Japan, the US and France to mount a more thorough search for Korean artifacts, focusing on state-run institutions in the respective countries.
These include Japan’s National Diet Library and the University of Tsukuba Library. In the US, Korean artifacts will be reviewed in museums including the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
“The Paris office is working with the National Library of France to locate old Korean maps within the library, and we expect the search to turn up 40 maps dating to the Joseon era (1392-1910),” the official said.
The search for the maps will run through 2027 at the National Library of France, as the library aims to streamline ways to explore old Asian maps. Korea is the first Asian partner to join the project, the official added.
Later this month, the KHS will reveal its latest repatriation from Japan, a 19th-century signboard that once hung at Seonwon Hall at Gyeongbokgung -- one of Seoul’s five Joseon palaces. The hall was destroyed during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.
The agency said it had purchased the artifact from a Japanese collector, preventing an auction. More study is needed to determine how the Joseon object was taken out of the country, the agency added.
Private donations have also contributed to repatriation efforts. In June, a Korean antique dealer in Japan donated the Johyeon Myogagun plaque, a poem plaque created by Song Hun, the father of Korean independence fighter Song Jin-woo.
The plaque, made between the mid-19th century and early 20th century, marks the establishment of “myogak,” or a hall set up next to a tomb for rituals, in Johyeon -- the old name for areas now known as Gwangdeok-ri in Damyang, South Jeolla Province.
