Hendrick Hamel Shipwrecked In Korea

In 1653, Dutch sailor Hendrick Hamel and 35 crewmates shipwrecked off Joseon (now Korea) while sailing to Japan on the Dutch East India Company ship De Sperwer. Because Joseon enforced strict isolationist policies, officials refused to let the castaways leave and kept them in the country. Hamel spent thirteen years in Korea under these restrictions before escaping in 1666 to the Dutch trading mission in Japan on a boat. There he wrote “Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653–1666,” the first detailed Western account of Korea, which was published in the Netherlands in 1668.

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