António Corea (fl. late 16th and 17th centuries) or António Korea was a Korean slave who was taken to Italy. He is possibly the first Korean to have set foot in Europe.

Little is known about Corea's life; he is attested to only briefly in a travelogue by his Italian master Francesco Carletti. Corea was enslaved during the 1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Korea and taken to Nagasaki, Japan. There, he was purchased by Carletti around 1597. They left Japan in March 1598 and visited China, Malaysia, and India. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, they stopped over at the island of Saint Helena. There, a conflict broke out between their ship and two Dutch vessels. Corea narrowly survived an extortion attempt by the Dutch, and managed to join Carletti. They were held as hostages, and arrived in the Netherlands around 7 July 1602. They then traveled through Paris and northern Italy, and eventually arrived in Florence on 12 July 1606. Later, Carletti wrote that Corea had settled in Rome.

In the 20th century, Corea's story drew significant attention in South Korea. Concurrently, a number of theories proliferated about Corea that are not known to be supported by evidence. Since 1932, it has been theorized that Corea has living descendents in the Italian village of Albi, Calabria on the basis of numerous people there with that surname. This link has become the subject of cultural exchange programs between Italy and South Korea. Recent genetic tests and surname analyses suggest this is unlikely but still possible. Since 1934, it has been theorized that Corea is the subject of a famous c. 1617 sketch by Peter Paul Rubens informally dubbed Man in Korean Costume [ko]; if true, the sketch would be the first known depiction of a Korean by a Westerner. But in 2016, historians Weststeijn and Gesterkamp identified a very similar drawing that they believe Ruben based his sketch on, and the theorized original has a written note that identifies the subject as a Chinese man named Yppong.

Relatively few Koreans left the Korean peninsula before the late 19th century.^[1] However, during the 1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Korea, tens of thousands of Korean slaves were taken from Korea to Japan, with the first shipment being taken in October 1592. From there, they were exported primarily to other parts of Asia.^[2]

Francesco Carletti was a Florentine merchant and traveler, who was in the process of a westward circumnavigation of the Earth around this period.^[3]

António Corea (his European name) was a Korean who was captured during the Japanese invasions and taken to Nagasaki, Japan as a slave. In June 1597, Carletti arrived in Nagasaki,^[4] where he eventually purchased Corea and four other Koreans.^[5][6][7] Carletti briefly wrote of this in his travelogue My Voyage Around the World:

Out of [the more maritime provinces of Korea,] they brought an infinite number of men and women, boys and girls, of every age, and they all were sold as slaves at the very lowest prices. I bought five of them for little more than twelve scudos. Having had them baptized, I took them with me to Goa in India, and there set them free. I brought one of them with me to Florence, and I think that today he is to be found in Rome, where he is known as António.^[8]

Carletti and Corea traveled together until they reached Europe. They left Japan in March 1598,^[9] and landed in Macau. In December 1599,^[10] they departed from there and arrived in Malacca twenty days later.^[11] They stopped by Cochin, then arrived in Goa by around March 1600. They departed on 25 December 1601 aboard the galleon Saint James.^[12] Carletti wrote:

I made an agreement with the pilot of that ship, who had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope eighteen or twenty times, and promised to give him [money to] cover my expenses for the whole voyage up to arrival at Lisbon for me and the three servants I was taking with me: one of the Japanese nation, a Korean, and the other a Mozambique Negro [sic].^[13]

After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the ship went to the island of Saint Helena, despite protests from the passengers of the ship.^[14] Since its discovery by Europeans in the early 16th century, the island had been a valuable stopover for European ships rounding Africa. However, it became increasingly dangerous, as ships would attack each other there.^[15] On 14 March 1602, they arrived at Saint Helena, but were quickly approached by two Dutch vessels. Suspicious of the vessels, the crew of the Saint James initiated a battle. After several days of fighting and the imminent sinking of their ship, the Saint James surrendered.^[16]

The Dutch apologized and claimed that they did not intend to fight, but responded after the Saint James initiated the battle. The Dutch helped repair the damaged ship, but the process took days, and the ship was continually at risk of sinking. Carletti was allowed to board the Dutch ships because he had many valuables with him, but others were initially told to stay behind.^[17] According to Carletti, the Dutch then laid a trap to kill or extort the remaining occupants of the Saint James. The Dutch asked the occupants to swim over to one of their boats for safety. A number of people drowned this way, and swimmers who made it over were cut with swords and killed. However, swimmers who offered the Dutch valuables were allowed aboard.^[17] Carletti mentions Corea again in this context:

[O]ne of my servants, of the Korean nation, played a trick on them despite the fact that he did not know how to swim and was aware that they were not accepting servants or slaves like himself. Around his neck he hung two of my little pictures, one on which was painted a crucified Christ, whereas the other was an ecce homo, and both of them on copper... Wearing them, he plunged into the sea and was quickly picked up by those sailors, who thought that he had something of great value to them. And when they saw what these things were, they gave them back to him, and as he already was in their boat, let him remain there, and thus took him to their ship...^[18]

Carletti and the others who made it to the Dutch ship became hostages. They were reportedly kept in poor and cramped conditions, which caused several deaths.^[19] They arrived on the island of Fernando de Noronha on 6 April, made further repairs to the Saint James, then departed again on 2 May. The Dutch left many Portuguese people behind on the relatively barren island.^[20]

They arrived in Middelburg, Zeeland, Netherlands on either 6 July^[5] or 7 July 1602.^[21] Carletti went^[a] to Paris, Lyon, Turin, Milan, Bologna, then finally arrived in Florence on 12 July 1606.^[22]

Since the early 20th century, a number of theories about Corea have been repeated by media and academic sources that are now considered unsupported by the known sparse evidence on Corea.^[23] The proliferation and persistence of these theories has been considered to have been exacerbated by the exciting nature of Corea's story, as well as insufficient factchecking by both the media and by several academics.^[23][24]

In 1932, Japanese historian Yamaguchi Masayuki (山口正之) claimed that Corea's descendents had settled near Catanzaro in Calabria as early as 1620, on the basis that a village called Albi had more than 500 people with that surname.^[25][23][b] Rome-based South Korean reporter Kim Seong-u (Korean: 김성우) published a popular article in 1979 that explored this theory, and further theorized that Corea had married an Italian woman named Anunchi Ita.^[25] However, another South Korean scholar Kwak Cha-seop (곽차섭) wrote in 2004 about being unsure of these claims.^[26] The surname "Corea" also exists in Spain, which has led some to speculate that these people may descend from Corea as well, perhaps from when Albi was under Spanish rule.^[26]

In 1989, the mayor of Albi installed a monument in a Corea Square, which was dedicated to the supposed meeting of Corea and Anunchi Ita.^[23] In early November 1992, the South Korean Ministry of Culture invited some of Corea's supposed descendents (including one man also named António Corea, who was head of a Korean cultural society in Italy), as well as the mayor of Albi, to visit Korea.^[23]

On 30 September 1993, MBC published a documentary entitled António Corea (안토니오 꼬레아), in which it was briefly mentioned that genetic studies on people in Albi did not significantly suggest Korean descendency. However, it also noted that hundreds of years had passed since Corea's lifetime, and that it may be difficult to detect Korean descendency now.^[23]

Kwak Cha-seop published a book in 2004 entitled Joseon Youth António Corea Meets Reubens (조선청년 안토니오 코레아, 루벤스를 만나다), in which he argued it is very unlikely that Europeans of the surname Corea were descendents of António Corea. He argued this on the basis of the genetic tests and the possibility that the surname "Corea" was descended from or related to the surname "Curia".^[23]

Kim Seong-u claimed that Corea was from the city of Namwon, and this claim was repeated for decades, but there is no known evidence for this.^[23]

Another theory has it that Corea became part of the Catholic clergy in Italy, but there is again no known evidence for this.^[23]

A 1965 history book compiled by the Chin-Tan Society [ko] has an article by historian Lee Sang-baek [ko], in which Lee claims Corea was a child at the time of his enslavement. This claim was then repeated for decades afterwards by both historians and reporters. However, there was reportedly no evidence provided for it.^[23]

In 1934, British art historian Claire Stuart Wortley theorized that Corea is the subject of a c. 1617 sketch informally named Man in Korean Costume [ko] (also Korean Man) by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens.^[27][24] The subject's identity and even ethnicity are not known with certainty, Wortley proposed that the subject's clothing was distinctly Korean and not Chinese.^[24] If the portrait is of a Korean, it is possibly the first known depiction of a Korean by a Western artist.^[25][26] The portrait drew significant attention; in 1983 it was sold at a Christie's auction for £324,000, which was the highest ever sum paid for such a sketch.^[24]

Kwak Cha-seop wrote in his 2004 book about this theory, and leaned supportive of it on the basis of his own analysis of the subject's clothing. He also argued it was possible (but still uncertain) that Corea had met with Rubens in Rome around July 1606 to October 1608.^[25][23] In 2015, South Korean art historian Noh Seong-du (노성두) challenged these claims. He argued that the clothes looked more Chinese (based on a forensic reconstruction of the cut-off top and bottom portions of the portrait), and also noted that the 1606–1608 dates conflicted with the general consensus that the portrait was from 1617.^[23][24]

However, a 2016 paper by Weststeijn and Gesterkamp drew international attention for proposing an alternate theory about the subject.^[27][24] The scholars found a very similar drawing from a book that is believed to predate Rubens' drawing. They proposed that Rubens had based his sketch on that original drawing. Accompanying text described the subject of the drawing as a Chinese merchant named Yppong, and the scholars were able to deduce information about Yppong meeting Dutch sailors in Asia then visiting the Netherlands for several months.^[27] Corea arrived in the Netherlands a little over a year after Yppong's departure back to Asia.^[28]

After Kim Seong-u's 1979 article, Corea's story captured the imagination of the South Korean public. Interest in Corea reached a climax by 1992: the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the Japanese invasions. That year, a musical entitled The Everlasting Flute (불멸의 피리), which was reportedly inspired by Corea's story, was produced. In 1993, author O Se-yeong (오세영) published a novel inspired by Corea's story entitled The Merchant of Venice (베니스의 개성상인). The book was a bestseller, and sold more than two million copies by 1994. Around this time, another novel entitled António Corea (안토니오 꼬레아) was also published.^[23] In 2015, South Korean President Park Geun-hye visited the J. Paul Getty Museum, where the Man in Korean Costume portrait is held.^[24]

• Carletti, Francesco (1964) [16th century]. My voyage around the world. Translated by Weinstock, Herbert. Internet Archive. New York: Pantheon Books.
• De Sousa, Lúcio (21 January 2019). The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-38807-9.
• Weststeijn, Thijs; Gesterkamp, Lennert (22 October 2016). "A new identity for Rubens's 'Korean man': Portrait of the Chinese merchant Yppong". Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek Online. 66 (1): 142–169. doi:10.1163/22145966-90000784. ISSN 2214-5966.

• KBS 역사추리 – 임진왜란은 노예전쟁이었다 1부 / KBS 19960906 방송 on YouTube – A 1996 documentary about Corea, Korean slaves, his supposed descendents visiting Korea, and Man in Korean Costume (in Korean)