• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.14
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• pp.3-51
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• 2006

In this paper, I applied known theories of appraisal and re-appraisal to the Japanese Colonial Archives and the Colonial City Planing Archives in Korea. The purpose of this application to some of sample archives was to develop a useful and effective approach to appraise the archives which were not appraised before they were determined to be "permanent" archives by the Japanese colonial officials. The colonial archives have lost their context and "chain of custody." A large portion of their volume also disappeared. Only thirty thousands volumes survived. The appraisal theories and related issues applied to and tested on these archives are; "original natures" of archives defined by Sir. Hillary Jenkinson, Schellenburg's information value appraisal theory, the re-appraisal theory based on economy of preservation and prospect for use of the archives, function-based appraisal theory and documentation theory, the special nature of the archives as unique, old and rare colonial archives, the intrinsic value of the archives, especially the city planing maps and drawings, and finally, the determination of the city planing archives as permanent archives according to the contemporary and modern disposal authority. The colonial archives tested were not naturally self-proven authentic and trustworthy records as many other archives are. They lost their chain of custody and they do not guarantee the authenticity and sincerity of the producers. They need to be examined and reviewed critically before they are used as historical evidence or any material which documented the contemporary society. Rapport's re-appraisal theory simply does not fit into these rare historical archives. The colonial archives have intrinsic values. Though these archives represent some aspects of the colonial society, they can not document the colonial society since they are just survived remains or a little part of the whole archives created. The functions and the structure of the Government General of Korea(朝鮮總督府) were not fully studied yet and hardly can be used to determine the archival values of the archives created in some parts of the colonial apparatus. The actual appraisal methods proved to be effective in the case of colonial archives was Schellenburg's information value appraisal theory. The contextual and content information of the colonial archives were analysed and reconstructed. The appraisal works also resulted in full descriptions of the colonial archives which were never described before in terms of archival principles.