September 29, 1993 FYIFrance: EXTRA -- The Korean Manuscripts Caper!(?) by: Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us Not to be out-done by the Dead Sea Scrolls Debacle, the French just have launched a library / scholarship controversy of their own, which may ultimately rank up there in the ethically-questionable-questions pantheon with such chestnuts as the scrolls, certain German / Texan war booty, Elgin's lost marbles (sorry), and "what-do-we-do-with-the- treasure-which-wasn't-King-Priam's-but-at-least-it's-gold?". Alan Riding, reporting in today's New York Times (September 29, West Coast Edition p.B3), describes an incident which is causing a major scandal now in French librarianship and scholarship: "It seemed like a reasonable exchange. After France won a multi- billion-dollar contract to supply its high-speed train to South Korea, President Franc,ois Mitterand this month made the good-will gesture of returning a 19th-century Korean manuscript seized by French troops in 1866." The problem was, though, as most readers of this posting will guess, that, "The country's museums and cultural institutions may be weighed down by the booty of imperial wars and conquests but, by law, these paintings, sculptures and documents are now French." So far, so normal: nothing which hasn't been heard before. The Louvre and the BN are filled with loot: one suspects that repatriation would empty most of the great museums and libraries of the world. But it is now that the drama of Riding's article begins: the Bibliothe`que Nationale, it seems, had agreed to provide a microfilm copy, but, "...it was only as Mr. Mitterrand set off for Seoul this month that he indicated he planned to hand the manuscript back." "At first, the library refused to surrender it, but its administrator, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, said he eventually ordered Miss Cohen (Monique Cohen, BN curator) and another curator, Jacqueline Sanson, to take the manuscript to Seoul because he was assured that it would only be shown to South Korea's President, Kim Young Sam." "In Seoul, a strange scene then unfolded. Learning that the document was about to be given away, Miss Cohen and Miss Sanson refused to release it. With the presentation ceremony about to start, France's Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe', then telephoned Mr. Toubon (the French Minister of Culture) in Paris and urged him to order the curators to give up the case containing the manuscript." "Mr. Toubon complied and the case was handed over, but the curators kept the key, requiring Presidential aides to open it by force to enable the ceremony to go ahead. The two curators then returned to Paris and promptly offered their resignations in protest." Anyone care to tackle this one? Cultural politics with a truly French twist. One can imagine the scene in Seoul: a battery of elegant Presidential courtiers, wielding the deadly acid tongues so prized among that set, and backed up no doubt by the more burly French Secret Service, besieging these two stubborn librarians, holed up in their little room at the Hotel Lotte, the courtiers ultimately grabbing the briefcase and beating it down the hall. "'So search me, if you want your damned key!', she bravely cried, as the angry crowd surged toward her..." Whatever people who read this may think of the ethics of keeping war booty, or of repatriating it, or of library politics or of Presidential noblesse oblige, we surely should thank Jacqueline Sanson and Monique Cohen for their show of bravery in the line of library duty ("All things considered, I'd rather be shelving books -- even in Philadelphia"). Thanks also to the French for giving us, once again, cultural politics with their inimitable panache. Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us issn 1071-5916 .