파리 소재 외규장각 도서 반환 협상의 문제점

Abstract

Ever since the Seoul National University had filed an official request of the return of the Wae-Kyujanggak materials currently located in France in 1991, the Korean public's interest in their own cultural artifacts and properties currently in the hands of other countries(such as Japan and other nations, etc.) has considerably increased. And as a result, a general consensus demanding the return of such materials was established. The negotiations with the French representatives to retrieve the Wae- Kyujanggak materials had initially brought us some positive results. An agreement was reached regarding the procedure of ‘permanently renting’ the materials and thus opening a new chapter of cultural trade relationship between the two countries. And France regressed from its initial position requiring from Korea only age-old book materials for the trade, and newly agreed to receive other forms of cultural artifacts or even cultural artifacts of another countries (such as Japan, China, etc.) instead. Yet Mr. Han Sang Jin, the head representative of the new negotiation team dispatched in 1999, and also oddly unaware of the achievements of previous negotiations, conducted negotiations twice in October 2000 and July 2001 in which he agreed with the French representatives on terms of trading materials in exactly equal nature. That is to say, a new agreement, dictating that Royal protocol manuscripts should be traded only with other Royal protocol manuscripts, was made. This was a truly devastating result which was due to the negotiation team's short-sighted intent solely to retrieve the manuscripts in France, and their naivete that led them play into France's intentions instead of seeing the bigger picture. Simply speaking, the agreement was an impossible one to carry out in the first place. Manuscripts located in France, which were originally meant for Royal inspection and only had single versions of them extant, were the ones which the negotiation team most actively sought to retrieve, yet no efforts were made to survey the exact number of remaining materials. In the meanwhile, objects to be delivered at the cost of those retrieved materials were manuscripts which were not meant for the Royal inspection, so in nature there is no practical way to secure such materials fully successfully. And other than these difficulties, other important issues also newly suggested themselves. First, the return of total of 84 volumes in the entire 297 volumes in France were declared unnegotiable by the French government. And secondly, 43 volumes of other book materials, 2 map pieces, 7 scroll materials and 3 marble tablets were also not included in the negotiation table due to the negligence of the negotiation team. Apparently Mr. Han Sang Jin is not an expert in International laws or diplomatic negotiations, and certainly not an expert in age-old book materials either. So he was simply not in any position to lead the negotiations. These inappropriate negotiations should be halted, and talks for retrieving the materials should commence on a completely new ground. The basic positions that we should maintain in the upcoming negotiations are as follow: First, the Wae-Kyujanggak materials are governmental properties of the country which produced them in the first place, and in no conditions that the ownership of those materials can be formally altered. Second, in 1866 the French navy deliberately burned and pillaged the cultural properties of the Chosun dynasty during their plundering, therefore committing an act of grand violation of International laws. They should answer to the implications. Third, under the circumstances France should completely restore the previous status of the Wae-Kyujanggak materials, and should return the materials to the Korean people at once. But considering there had been an agreement made earlier dictating that the materials should be returned to the Korean people via a procedure of 'permanent lease(renting)', this agreement should be honored. These basic principles should be maintained as firmly as possible. The only remaining problem is how we would proceed to open a new chapter of cultural trade relationship between Korea and France after the permanent lease(renting) of manuscripts are completed, and how we would agree on the nature and contents of such relationship. The French government might try to relate the matter at hand with the issue of the Chosun government's execution of French missionaries during the 1860s, but we should actively respond to that sort of inappropriate ropositions as well.