Korean Fountain Pens

[Flippy]

*Rolls eyes* GREAT. Another rant on Korea.

[Water Ouzel]

*Rolls eyes* GREAT. Another rant on Korea.

 

I didn't see it some much a rant as curiosity. There is quite a bit of interest in Korean-related things like food, K-pop and Hallyu in the U.S., particularly on the west coast in areas with high tech business going on.

 

Meanwhile, the couple of comments regarding fountain pen use in Viet Nam; it most likely derived from the French period of influence there. Most of that time would have been during the greatest use of dip and fountain pens by the French themselves.

 

For Taiwan, I have no idea, unless perhaps there were a lot of Chinese moving to Taiwan from British-influenced parts of China post-WW2.

 

(And a zombie thread rises yet again...)

[Mannyonpil]

Kyobo Bookstore in Seoul has a good selection of fountain pens. I imagine the other mega bookstores to too.

 

When I lived in Korea in the 1990s and 2000s there were fountain pens to be had even in really cheap stationary stores. I got one for around 30,000 won but I cannot for the life of me remember the brand. I bought one really interesting vanishing point from China for 5,000 won but it fell apart almost immediately.

 

Here is an interesting Korean website for pens and stationary: http://www.bestpen.co.kr/

Edited April 16, 2016 by Mannyonpil

[Mannyonpil]

Youtube videos of writing Korean with fountain pens:

 

https://youtu.be/e9JfGrUgcQc

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJy4IRaLMd4

Edited April 16, 2016 by Mannyonpil

[Mannyonpil]

There are fountain pens from both North and South Korea on ebay.

[mathsw]

I was recently surprised by a Korean friend of mine who owns several LAMY pens, most of them engraved with her name.

 

It would be interesting to find an actual Korean make since I already have a bunch of Chinese pens.

[ink-syringe]

Ive been here for a very long time. The only really interesting bits I have seen are Korea themed Fountain pens made by Sailor and others for fountain pen clubs. There are very few real FP related items here. The Pilot shop on Chongno has been here forever and if you buy me a cup of coffee or a beer I'll tell you what I have heard about that place. They make their own Pilot branded items and I imagine some deal was made that explains why Platinum and Sailor are found here easily and Pilot not.

 

People keep trying. But honestly Korea is just not a fountain pen place. During the colonial period they imported Japanese pens. (in my research in newspaper archives in the 1920s, 1930s & 1940 I saw lots of ads for Japanese pens that looked like BCHR pens). Parkers were gift items here in the 50s~70s but for whatever reason no real big Korea brand ever emerged.

 

Lamys are the most popular now despite the wild prices. Parkers and Watermans still sell at the pen counters as do Faber-Castel, but mostly Ball pens and roller balls.

 

A new, younger crowd is starting to get interest as a fringe hobby but I teach about 300 students a year and very very few even know what a FP Is and every time i have handed one to a student they have written with it upside down.

 

Really old people sometimes admire my Parkers.

 

People who work at pen counters at the big book stores know nothing about pens, filling systems, etc.

 

I am 100% sure the best selling pen here is the Lamy Safari.

[Mannyonpil]

Let's revive the topic...

 

I have recently learned about several North Korean fountain pens:

 

Mangyongdae

Pyongyang

Chollima (or Chullima?)

 

I have seen these pens with aerometric and bulb filling systems on ebay. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of these pens?

 

I did find this thread:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/225181-fountain-pen-from-behind-iron-curtain/?hl=chollima&do=findComment&comment=2583537

 

Does anyone know anymore?

[Drone]

The 'Monami Olika', a modern interpretation of the fountain pen - made in S. Korea.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/312616-monami-olika/?hl=olika

 

http://www.monami.com

 

There are YouTube videos of the Olika too, some in written Korean (Hangul).

Edited April 11, 2017 by Drone

[ink-syringe]

Just picked up a Korean Glass pen from the 1950s.

 

It is neat. It has the label and branding inside the glass of the pen. cute. Pray I don't break it.

[Mannyonpil]

Can you show us some pics? That sounds great.

[Zeeppo]

The Monami Company makes a couple of fountain pens. They look to be lower prices models. Here is a review of the Olika that is on this site.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/312616-monami-olika/

 

Something to note is that nations with a long tradition of writing with brushes have been strong holds of fountain pens in general.

[ink-syringe]

Something to note is that nations with a long tradition of writing with brushes have been strong holds of fountain pens in general.

 

Like to see something more to back up that assertion. Japan is a fountain pen powerhouse and has been in the game a long time. But Korea is not a "strong hold of fountain pens in general" despite being a country with a long venerable tradition of brush writing and ink and paper making. I don't know enough about China to make strong assertions but I never thought of China as a big fountain pen country either. They make a lot of pens now. I am not sure about 100 years ago. In Korea, 100 years ago the fountain pens were largely imported from Japan. You can see newspaper archives and the papers in the 20s and 30s were filled with ads for Japanese imported pens, which were a kind of new thing. Manufactured goods generally being a pretty new thing here at the dawn of the century. In the Chosun Dynasty, you needed something, you made it in the home or maybe went to a traditional market. The dept. store, restaurants all came with foreigners or the Japanese.

 

I'd like to know where or how you came to hold this notion. Or, if you just thought it up and it isn't based on anything but a hunch.

 

The Olika is a new issue. It is a cheap pen. I don't see many people using them or buying them here. I see hundreds of students every week and ain't none using one.

Edited April 12, 2017 by ink-syringe

[Mannyonpil]

No one has any info on the North Korean fountain pens? If anyone does, please share what you know. I am terribly curious.

 

As for fountain pens in the south, I wonder if there has not really been a chance for a domestic industry to emerge. Perhaps during the colonial period fountain pens came from Japan and in the post-colonial period they came from the US. It would be interesting to see if a South Korean pen company emerges now that there is a growing interest.

 

As for manufacturing in Korea, it has been around for a very, very long time. What has not been around in Korea for so long is industrial capitalism.

 

I never thought much about the history of restaurants in Korea, or elsewhere, but there were certainly restaurants and inns in Korea before the colonial period. Yun Ch'i-ho mentioned them now and again in his diaries, should you want to read about it. I do not remember the exact location in the diaries but he complains about inflation by comparing restaurant prices. I want to say this part is from the 1890s.

 

I wonder why it would be that there are North Korean fountain pens but no South Korean fountain pens. If anything, I would have suspected the reverse.

[ink-syringe]

No one has any info on the North Korean fountain pens? If anyone does, please share what you know. I am terribly curious.

 

As for fountain pens in the south, I wonder if there has not really been a chance for a domestic industry to emerge. Perhaps during the colonial period fountain pens came from Japan and in the post-colonial period they came from the US.

 

Can confirm this is true. I have done some pretty extensive research on 20s- 30s Korea and spent a lot of times looking through archives. In the colonial period, there were imported hard rubber pens from Japan advertised like crazy in newspapers and magazines. In the 50s, Parkers came with the US Army. I have had many very old people admire my Parker clips in my pocket and more than one or two old grandfathers ask me if I could locate a Parker 51 for them.

 

 

 

I never thought much about the history of restaurants in Korea, or elsewhere, but there were certainly restaurants and inns in Korea before the colonial period. Yun Ch'i-ho mentioned them now and again in his diaries, should you want to read about it. I do not remember the exact location in the diaries but he complains about inflation by comparing restaurant prices. I want to say this part is from the 1890s.

 

 

That would be very odd. Since there were VERY few restaurants before the colonial period, what few there were didn't usually serve meals, most were Chinese-Korean food or one or two Western food places for foreigners. Restaurants in 1890s? That is odd. Since that is the very beginning of restaurants coming to Korea. Traditional markets had Chumaks but these were more bar than eatery though you could get side dishes and in a pinch, some rice. Full blown restaurants only appeared in the early 1900s with chefs being employed to Kisaeng jip largely to entertain Japanese military. In the 1910s with the influx of Chinese laborers came some Chinese food restaurants featuring a lot of the same food we eat today at Chinese-Korean places. The first western style restaurant opened in 1902 and in 1914 the restaurant at the Chosun Hotel opened, followed by a famous place called The Grill in 1925, which proved the best (and for a time only) real authentic Western food place in Seoul. It was wildly popular but much too expensive for most Koreans. In fact, the real boom in restaurants really only started in the 1970s with restaurants that Koreans themselves could easily afford.

 

Yun Ch'i-ho is a terrible person to take this info from. He was really elite, international and was educated overseas. He is not even close to being your typical work-a-day Korean of that era. You might as well have picked the King himself. He was prominent Yangban, son of a general, a methodist, and went to Emory and Vanderbilt, studied in China, Japan, was a high-ranking minister and pretty pro-Japanese or at least luke warm on Korean nationalism later in life.

[ink-syringe]

randomly found in my research folder. I have not examined it so hopefully, this will not come back to bite me but looks like an Advert for Transcend Warranted Eyedropper (?) Pens. Likely Japanese imports. Many old brands looked like this. Typical Waterman-esque blocky pens.

 

Korean Newspaper from Nov. 17, 1924

 

[Aquaria]

Funny, I was just watching a 2015 KPop music video that devotes a good deal of screen space to a guy using a fountain pen, starting at 0:55:

 

 

The video is by one of Korea's top male vocalists, Jonghyun of the boy band SHINee. He's not in the video, BTW.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Aquaria

[Aquaria]

Double post. Don't know what happened, so ignore this.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Aquaria

[Mech-for-i]

randomly found in my research folder. I have not examined it so hopefully, this will not come back to bite me but looks like an Advert for Transcend Warranted Eyedropper (?) Pens. Likely Japanese imports. Many old brands looked like this. Typical Waterman-esque blocky pens.

 

Korean Newspaper from Nov. 17, 1924

 

That certainly an ad for Japanese pens cause at the bottom of the ad is the Mfr's address and its in Tojyo

[inkstainedruth]

Interesting thread. I just acquired a pen which I'm guessing is from the 1970s-1990s, based on the style. It has a Pilot nib and fill system, but when I contacted Pilot-USA, the contact person told me that Pilot-Japan told HER the pen was made in Korea for the Korean market, and not by Pilot.

You can see photos of that pen here: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/323724-curiouser-and-curiouser/?hl=%2Bcuriouser+%2Band+%2Bcuriouser I posted them last week asking if there was anyone who could tell me more about it beyond what I'd heard from Pilot.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

Edited June 5, 2017 by inkstainedruth