Science as a Family Affair: Won Pyong-Oh and the Transwar Origins of South Korean Ornithology

Abstract

Won Pyong-Oh (1929-2020) and his ornithological research played a significant role in the emergence of South Korean ornithology and nature conservation, which previous scholarship has attributed to US scientific aid and the resulting interactions that occurred in the 1960s. Focusing on his family’s scientific activities—including the work of his father Won Hong Gu (1888-1970) and his eldest brother Won Pyung Hooi’s (1911-1995)—from the colonial period to the 1960s, this paper argues the crucial role played by transwar interactions between the Won family and Japanese biologists in Won Pyong-Oh’s ornithological turn. In particular, it traces the Won family’s natural history collection activities as what I call “science as a family affair,” that is, a division of scientific labor between senior and younger family members as a principal investigator and an assistant/collector. By tracing these activities within the family as well as their continued engagements with Japanese biologists, this paper will reveal that Won Pyong-Oh’s ornithological research and conservationist work developed in the wider context of the reconstruction of Asian ornithological and conservationist networks in the 1960s.