nwasianweekly.com
Aug. 12, 2006

Dr. James Palais

By Carol N. Vu
Northwest Asian Weekly

One of the world’s most respected scholars on Korean history, a professor at the University of Washington for nearly four decades, has died. Dr. James Palais passed away Aug. 6 after a long bout with chronic leukemia. He was 72.

Palais is considered the founder of Korean history studies in the United States. Only the second person in the country to receive a Ph.D. in Korea studies, Palais trained more than half of all Ph.D. recipients in Korean history who are engaged in the field in the U.S. today.

“He was extremely intelligent. He read everything and remembered everything that he read,” recalls Dr. Clark Sorensen, chair of the Korea Studies Program at the UW. “He really challenged you, and if you were up to the challenge and went back at him, he really respected you. But a lot of students weren’t up to the challenge and found him intimidating. …

“But those who challenged him became the best,” said Sorensen.

Palais’ former students now teach at some of the most respected universities in the country, including UCLA, Harvard, Stanford and Indiana. Sorensen himself took a class from Palais while he was pursuing his master’s at the UW.

Palais was also well respected amongst local Korean community leaders. While it was rare for Palais to attend events in the Korean community, Ick-whan Lee said, he was not an unknown figure. People knew him as the esteemed scholar of Korea studies.

“Myself and (state) Sen. Paull Shin know him very well personally. We have a lot of respect for his scholarship,” said Lee, founder of the Korean American Historical Society.

Palais “loved the Korean people,” Lee added. It showed in his academic writings, especially in regards to his opposition to the military dictatorship of Korea. “He was a strong proponent of Korean democracy and freedom in Korea,” Lee said.

For his enormous impact on the field of Korea studies, Palais received the Top Contributor to the Asian Community award in 2002 from the Northwest Asian Weekly.

Palais was born and raised in Brookline, Mass., and received his bachelor’s in American history from Harvard in 1955. He enlisted in the Army soon after graduation and entered the Army Language School, where he had to decide which language and culture he would study.

He wanted to pursue Russian, but the Russian classes were full. So he turned to Korean. Unbeknownst to him and everyone else, that decision would alter the course of Korea studies throughout the world.

After serving in Korea, he returned to the United States and started a career in academia. While studying for his doctorate at Harvard, he was under the tutelage of the only Korea studies Ph.D. at the time, Ed Wagner.

Palais was recruited to the University of Washington following a few teaching stints on the East Coast. When he arrived, he made the UW program the largest Korea studies program on the North American mainland, with three full-time scholars devoted entirely to the study of Korea.

For the next few decades, Palais would build a reputation as a leading scholar on Korean history. Published in 1975, his Politics and Policy in Traditional Korea was praised as “a cornerstone of 19th-century Korean history” and was one of the first English-language texts to be based on the study of Chinese-language court documents on Korea.

His 1,230-page “magnum opus,” as Sorensen called it, on Korean institutions during Choson Dynasty, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions, was awarded the 1998 John Whitney Hall prize for the best book on Japan or Korea.

In 1995 he received the Yongjae Paek Nakchun Award from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Five years ago, The Association for Asian Studies gave him its lifetime achievement award.

“He’s been such a presence in the field that I suppose we’re just moving on to a new generation,” said Sorensen. “In his generation, there were probably only three major figures in the field, in the Western world. He was one of them.”

Following 33 years at the UW, Palais announced his retirement in 2001, but continued to teach part time because a replacement for him had not been found. In fact, the future of the Korea Studies Program was in jeopardy because the university had not committed any funding to it. Palais then went to Korean community leaders Lee and Shin for help.

Lee and Shin kicked off a campaign to raise money through a combination of grants from international foundations and community contributions. To date, the campaign has raised about $3.5 million of its nearly $5 million goal.

“An important part of the current campaign for the Korea studies program is to reestablish and regain the long tradition of Korea studies started by Jim Palais, and to make University of Washington Korea studies the best. In the ’70s and ’80s, we used to enjoy that reputation. We would like to regain that prestige,” Lee said.

An endowment has been set up to fund the James B. Palais Professorship of Korean History. Sorensen expects top-tier candidates to apply for that position.

Until his hospitalization in the spring of 2005, Palais was still writing, editing and teaching. For three years after his retirement, he also served as dean of international studies at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea.

“We were very fortunate for having him here,” Lee said.

Palais’ family was by his side at the time of his death. He is survived by his wife Jane and their children, Julie and Mike.

At his request, a funeral will not be held, but Sorensen said the UW will “probably” hold a memorial service this fall.

Carol N. Vu can be reached at carol@nwasianweekly.com.

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