Message from egant

[Anonymous]

Over the break, I visited LACMA's East Asian Collection-- I had remembered that a family friend had donated a burial stone to the Korean exhibit, and I wanted to see it again. Hidden away in the lower level of the building, it's not the most spectacular piece in the place-- two heavy black marble tablets with aged gray characters grided across the face-- but it has an interesting story; one I was lucky to find out.
The characters on the tablet certainly don't look Korean. They're not. Written in Chinese (as most literary and government documents were in the 1700s-- see the wikipedia article on Hangul, which, though developed in the 1400s, was not widely used until the 1900s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul), the stone records the history of the Suh family. It notes the various government offices held in the family, as well as the personalities and a brief CV of each notable. I asked my friend if this was done with each family member, as it would be a pretty redundant affair-- and she responded that since it was such an expensive custom, it was probably done only with the most important members of the family, like this former Prime Minister.

She came into possession of the stone about 5 years ago, when the family's burial ground in Korea was sold, and the cemetery had to be moved in preparation.