Hendrick Hamel

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Hendrick Hamel (1630 – after 1692) was a Dutch sailor. He provided the first Western account of Korea. Little is known of Hamel's early life and life after his journey to Korea. He was born in the Netherlands in 1630, and sailed to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1650. In 1653, while sailing to Japan, Hamel and his crew were shipwrecked off Jeju Island, then part of the state of Joseon. Because of Joseon's isolationist policies, they were refused permission to leave the country. Hamel ended up spending thirteen years in Joseon, until he escaped to a Dutch trading mission to Dejima island, Japan in 1666. There, he wrote the earliest first-hand account of a Westerner in Korea, "Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653–1666" which was subsequently published in the Netherlands in 1668. In recent years, Hamel has become a symbol of cultural and economic exchange between the Netherlands and South Korea. A number of monuments exist to him in both countries.